UNIVERSAL
LIBRARY
OU 170717
UNIVERSAL
LIBRARY
OSMANIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
Call No. ^ No. /7i>'4S'
Author
Title
This Wiok shoul^be returned
last marked below^
RECENT POETRY
RECENT
POETRY
1923-1933
Edited with an Introduction
by
ALIDA MONRO
GERALD HOWE LTD 6
THE POETRY BOOKSHOP
LONDON
FIRST PUBLISHED DECEMBER ip}}
Gerald Howe Ltd
■^3 SOHO square w.i
The Poetry Bookshop
38 GREAT RUSSELL STREET W.C.I
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
INTRODUCTION
An anthology must always have a purpose. It may
illustrate some theory or merely exhibit the vanity of
the editor This particular collection — which is strictly
not an anthology — has been made with the intention of
doing for the poetry of the past ten years what the
five volumes o( Georgian Poetry did for some of the poetry
of the period 1911-1922
There is, however, one vital difference In the
Georgian Poetry boohs was collected work that was
representative, at least in the four volumes following
that for 1911-12, of poets who showed a certain kinship in
their treatment of their subjects The present anthology,
however, includes poets of all schools The editor of
Georgian Poetry eschewed any poetry that might appear to
represent what may now be termed the Left Wing For
m the collections edited by E M (initials which no
longer conceal the identity of Mr Edward Marsh), no
free verse, as we understand it, found a place
Before the first volume of E M 's series was published,
however, Ezra Pound was actively engaged in ploughing
the furrows for the new crop of poetry Between the
issue of the first and second volumes he launched his
collections, Des Imagistes and Catholic Anthology Both
of these contained work by poets who have since fully
justified his foresight in assembling it for the attention
of those ready to be interested
E M was, quite rightly, anxious to show that there
were a number of poets in this century whose work
was equal to that produced in the last, and who differed
more in kind than in degree from their Edwardian
predecessors But his ear was attuned to the glories
of the past rather than to the potentialities of the future.
Consequently, anyone who had never seen Georgian
Poetry until this moment would, on studying the five
volumes, be unaware of the very great change — apart
from such new subjects and changes of form as were
necessitated by the war — which had overtaken English
poetry since the accession of King George He would
be unaware of the existence of Mr Pound's anthologies
mentioned above, and of The Chapbook, Coterie, Wheels,
The Owl, to mention but a few of the publications of
the years 1911-1922 in which the new poetry could be
found
Most important of all, he would not know that a
poem was included in Catholic Anthology in 1914, and was
published as a slim paper-covered volume in 1917,
whose appearance passed almost unnoticed except by
the most acute observers, and whose influence has been
almost as disturbing to the poetry of our time as the
assassination at Sarajevo was to the peace of Europe
I refer, of course, to The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock,
by T S Eliot At the time of its publication no one
could have foretold that it was to be the source of the
poetry of the next twenty years, nor that the leaven then
introduced into the vat would work and work, until
now, after sixteen years, it is still foaming and frothing
in the productions of most of our younger poets
It IS not to be supposed that the
are intended in any way to depreciate the success of
Georgian Poetry, nor to belittle the purpose of the editor,
who wanted only to put poetry back into our lives
The intention is to record a passing regret that it was
not then possible to include within the covers of those
interesting and important volumes more varied types
of poetry these are as worthy of the title ' Georgian ' as
any that appeared therein, more especially as the term
will in the future be understood to cover a period of
years rather than a particular poetic school
A little more than ten years having elapsed since
the last volume of Georgian Poetry was published, and
foregoing remarks
VI
this decade being a convenient time to look back upon,
It seemed appropriate that an attempt should be made
to cissemble in one volume some poets who were writing
during the years 1911-1922 but who had not attained
any great popularity in that period, one or two who had
contributed to the anthologies but who may be said to
have outgrown their ' Georgian ' sobriquet, and some
who have acquired fame since then A few poets
have been introduced who have only lately published
a book, and some who have yet not achieved publication
in book form, because it seemed that they represent so
definitely the outlook and technique of the present
poetry W B Yeats is included — although he can in no
way be described either as a ^ Georgian ' or a ‘ neo-
Georgian ' — because he, above all twentieth-century
writers, has bridged the tremendous gulf that cuts off the
past century from 1933 His latest book, The Winding
Stair, has unquestionably established him as the giant of
our time, who represents his age both in mind and in
his expression of it
The scheme has been roughly to leave out all those
poets who truly belong to the period known as ^ Georgian,^
among whom are John Drinkwater and W W Gibson,
and such poets as D H Lawrence and Ezra Pound,
who had made great reputations long before 1923
Such older writers as John Masefield and W H Davies
have been omitted for similar reasons Many poets have
been included because, although their technique cannot
be described as definitely modern in the accepted sense
of the word, nevertheless their approach to, and treat-
ment of, their subjects is entirely new Pamela Travers
and Francis Macnamara may be cited as examples
Unfortunately it has been impossible to include any
poems by Laura Riding, who at her best is a brilliant
exponent of twentieth-century technique It is regret-
table, too, that Robert Graves has to be conspicuous
vii
by his absence The absence, in both cases, is self-
imposed The Editor would have been proud to have
them appear with their fellow poets, but readers of
A Pamphlet against Anthologies will realize that the
authors of this caustic work could not reasonably be
included in any collection such as the present one,
however ^ modern ' its scope
Posterity will decide whether or not this is a poetic
generation If the majority of our critics are to be
believed, posterity will reply in the negative On the
one hand the poet is blamed for having discarded the
veil behind which his Victorian predecessors hid
their suspicions that all was not well with the world,
on the other he is exhorted to employ the outworn poetic
language that suited his grandfathers He is accused
of having no faith and no ideals, of writing unintelligibly,
of being too much occupied with social problems, of
Ignoring the ' big themes,' and of possessing no moral
standards with which to improve a world waiting for a
message.
In defence of the poet let this be said at once it is
possible to agree that he who is the product, pure and
simple, of the twentieth century — that is to say he
who was born since 1900 — is probably devoid of most
of the qualities enumerated above, as they are under-
stood by persons born during the sixties, seventies and
eighties of last century
At no time in the history of man has there been so
sudden and violent a change in his environment and
circumstance as has taken place in the past twenty-
five years It is far easier, in some ways, to understand
the past, even the past of two hundred years ago, than
it IS to understand our own time, or to try to imagine
what life may be like twenty years hence It is, then,
not remarkable that, oppressed by every fresh scientific
discovery, with the Great War behind, with the Greater
Vlll
and more horrible War before him, the poet to*day
should be preoccupied with subjects and forms that do
not seem to fit into the preconceived notions of what
constitutes poetry, according to the canons of an age in
literature that is now as dead as is the Augustan age.
Again, those whose ears are too set in the mould
of classical form and rhythm are not able to re-tune
their tympana to catch the less obvious, but most
apparent, cadences and speech rhythms that are charac-
teristic of a great deal of the poetry of the present
decade Let the sceptic hear them read aloud and he will
not fail to find that his ear (will he but allow it) will
pick up the inflection and pace of the poem If he
will turn to the work of Mr Eliot, Mr Read, Mr
Spender and Mr Auden as a beginning, he will find
this truth at once demonstrated The more poetry
conforms to the speech rhythm of a people, the more
easily will it re-enter the life of the ordinary person
Those readers who believe that twentieth-century
poetry is without faith or ideals should read ' The
Witnesses/ 'The Future is not for Us/ and ^ After
they have Tired, ^ to mention only three of the many
serious poems in this collection Faith is not always
best expressed by constant asseveration, nor are ideals
made more manifest by perpetual reiteration such poems
affirm by what they purport to deny To cast forth
illusion is not to become disillusioned By razing a
city to its foundations we can rebuild it, and from
what may appear to be the ruins of a great poetic past
the new town will spring Whoever reads poetry
seriously to-day cannot fail to be impressed with the
faith and ideals therein expressed
There is much to please, and much to annoy, in this
little book Whether or not we care to accept the poems
as such, and whether we wish to believe it or not, the
future of poetry is with the * hollow men ^ of to-day.
IX
Grateful thanks are due to authors and their literary
agents for kind permission to print the copyright
poems in these pages, also to the following publishers*
Messrs George Allen O Unwin Ltd for poems from the
Collected Poems of Richard Aldington , Messrs Chatto and W indus
Ltd for poems by Peter Quennell , Messrs Constable U Co
Ltd for poems from The Fleeting, by Walter de la Mare,
Messrs Gerald Duckworth O Co Ltd for poems from the
Collected Poems of Edith Sitwell and Sacheverell Sitwell, Messrs
Faber and Faber Ltd for poems from Poems igog-ig 25 , by
T S Eliot, Collected Poems of Herbert Read, and Poems by
Stephen Spender, Messrs William Heinemann Ltd for poems
from The Hem t’ s Journey, hy Siegfried Sassoon, Messrs Macmillan
and Co Ltd and Mr W B Yeats for poems from The Winding Stair ,
Messrs Methuen U Co Ltd for poems from Spring Encounter, by
John Pudney, and from Autumn Values and other Poems, by
Randall Swingler, The Parton Press for poems from Thirty Pre-
liminary Poems, by George Barker, The Poetry Bookshop and
Messrs R Cobden-Sanderson Ltd for poems from the Collected
Poems of Harold Monro, Mr Humphrey Milford, The Bookmans
Journal, the Marchesa Origo, and Miss Leplat Scott, for poems by
Geoffrey Scott, The Poetry Bookshop for poems by Charlotte Mew
Some of the poems in this collection have appeared in the
following periodicals The Adelphi, The Chapbook, The Dublin
APagaztne, The Listener, The Mew English Weekly, Mew Verse,
Scrutiny, and The Week-End Renew, and thanks are due to the
Editors for permitting me to reprint them
The poem ' Fin de Fete ' by Charlotte Mew, which is
reproduced in facsimile on page 92, was copied out by
Thomas Flardy, and was found among his papers after
his death It has appeared in The Sphere, Hardy made
an alteration in the punctuation of the first line of the
second verse, Charlotte Mew however, did not incor-
porate this in a copy of the poem which she gave, with
the Hardy copy, to the present writer
A M
Movember
X
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION
POEMS BY
V
RICHARD ALDINGTON
I
W. H AUDEN
;
GEORGE BARKER
13
RONALD BOTTRALL
17
ROY CAMPBELL
2 }
WALTER DE LA MARE
29
T S ELIOT
3 y
WILLIAM EMPSON
49
DAVID GASCOYNE
;3
OLIVER GOGARTY
F
RICHARD GOODMAN
65
F R HIGGINS
67
CECIL DAY LEWIS
71
FRANCIS MACNAMARA
79
CHARLES MADGE
87
CHARLOTTE MEW
91
SUSAN MILES
97
HAROLD MONRO
lOI
EDWIN MUIR
109
FRANK O’CONNOR
RUTH FITTER
II7
XI
POEMS BY:
WILLIAM PLOMER 121
JOHN PUDNEY
PETER QUENNELL 129
PLERBERT READ
MICHAEL ROBERTS 145
SIEGFRIED SASSOON 147
GEOFFREY SCOTT iji
EDITH SITWELL i;7
OSBERT SITWELL i 6 j
SACFLEVERELL SITWELL 17)
STEPFLEN SPENDER 179
RANDALL SWINGLER 18;
PAMELA TRAVERS 189
SYLVIA TOWNSEND WARNER 197
HUMBERT WOLFE 201
W B YEATS 20;
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 209
XU
RICHARD ALDINGTON
From Songs for Puritans
Possession
Rhapsody in a Third-class Carriage
B
I
Richard
Aldington
From SONGS FOR PURITANS
(hi)
Euphemia studies law, Aminta
Inspects the ailments of the poor,
Eudocia prays and Araminta
Numbers the stars on heaven's floor,
Yet Chloe for my mistress I decree,
Whose only art is artless love of me
'Tis not the statute binds together.
Physic ignores the wounds we share,
Love works in dull or starry weather
And nakedness suits not with prayer.
Then let your learning, Chloe, still consist
In all the various ways of being kist
POSSESSION
Richard
Aldington
I must possess you utterly
And utterly must you possess me,
So even if that dreamer's tale
Of heaven and hell be true
There shall be two spirits rived together
Either in whatever peace be heaven
Or in the icy whirlwind that is hell
For those who loved each other more than God —
So that the other spirits shall cry out
' Ah* Look how the ancient love yet holds to them
That these two ghosts are never driven apart
But kiss with shadowy kisses and still take
Joy from the mingling of their misty limbs* '
5
Richard
Aldington
RHAPSODY IN A THIRD-CLASS CARRIAGE
Deadness of English winter, dreariness,
cold sky over provincial towns, mist
Melancholy of undulating trams
solitary jangling through muddy streets,
narrowness, imperfection, dullness,
black extinguisher over English towns;
mediocre women in dull clothes —
their nudity a disaster —
heavy cunning men (guts and passbooks),
relics of gentry, workmen on bicycles,
puffy small whores, baby carriages,
shops, newspapers, bets, cinemas, allotments . . .
These are your blood, their begetters
made in the same bed as yours
(horror of copulation),
colossal promiscuity of flesh through centuries
(seed and cemeteries)
Sculptor* show Mars
bloody in gas-ht abattoirs,
Apollo organist of Saint Mary's,
Venus of High Street, Athena,
worshipped at National schools
Painter* there are beets m allotments,
embankments, coal-yards, villas, grease,
interpret the music, orchestra,
trams, trains, cars, hobnails, factories —
O poet* chant them to the pianola,
to the metronome in faultless verse . . .
4
W. H. AUDEN
The Witnesses
S
W. H. THE WITNESSES
Auden
I
You dowagers with Roman noses
Sailing along between banks of roses
well dressed,
You Lords who sit at committee tables
And crack with grooms in
your father's jest,
Solicitors with poker faces,
And doctors with black bags to cases
hurried,
Reporters coming home at dawn
And heavy bishops on the lawn
by sermons worried;
You stokers lit by furnace-glare,
And you, too, steeplejacks up there
singing.
You shepherds wind-blown on the ridges,
Tramps leaning over village bridges
your eardrums ringing.
On land, on sea, in field, m town
Attend Musician put them down,
those trumpets,
Let go, young lover, of her hand
Come forward both of you and stand
as still as limpets
Close as you can and listen well
My companion here is about to tell
a story,
Peter, Pontius Pilate, Paul
Whoever you are, it concerns you all
and human glory
riding stables
6
II
Call him Prince Alpha if you wish
He was born in a palace, his people were swish;
his christening
Was called by the Tatler the event of the year.
All the photographed living were there
and the dead were listening.
You would think I was trying to foozle you
If I told you all that kid could do;
enough
To say he was never afraid of the dark
He climbed all the trees in his pater's park;
his nurse thought him rough.
At school his brilliance was a mystery,
All languages, science, maths, and history
he knew,
His style at cricket was simply stunning
At rugger, soccer, hockey, running
and swimming too
The days went by, he grew mature.
He was a looker you may be sure,
so straight
Old couples cried ' God bless my soul
I thought that man was a telegraph pole '
when he passed their gate.
His eyes were blue as a mountain lake,
He made the hearts of the girls to ache,
he was strong.
He was gay, he was witty, his speaking voice
Sounded as if a large Rolls-Royce
had passed along
W. H.
Auden
7
W, H, He kissed his dear old mater one day,
Auden He said to her Tm going away,
good-bye'
No sword nor terrier by his side
He set oS through the world so wide
under the sky
Where did he travel? Where didn't he travel
Over the ice and over the gravel
and the sea.
Up the fevered jungle river.
Through haunted forests without a shiver
he wandered free.
What did he do? What didn't he do,
He rescued maidens, overthrew
ten giants
Like factory chimneys, slaughtered dragons.
Though their heads were larger than railway waggons
tamed their defiance.
What happened, what happened? I'm coming to that;
He came to a desert and down he sat
and cried.
Above the blue sky arching wide
Two tall rocks as black as pride
on either side.
There on a stone he sat him down.
Around the desert stretching brown
like the tide,
Above the blue sky arching wide
Two black rocks on either side
and, O how he cried.
8
' I thought my strength could know no stemming
But I was foolish as a lemming,
for what
Was I born, was it only to see
Tm as tired of life as life of me?
let me be forgot
Children have heard of my every action
It gives me no sort of satisfaction
and why?
Let me get this as clear as I possibly can
No, 1 am not the truly strong man,
O let me die '
There in the desert all alone
He sat for hours on a long flat stone
and sighed.
Above the blue sky arching wide
Two black rocks on either side,
and then he died.
Now ladies and gentlemen, big and small,
This story of course has a morale,
again
Unless like him you wish to die
Listen, while my friend and I
proceed to explain.
Ill
What had he done to be treated thus?
If you want to know, he'd offended us.
for yes.
We guard the wells, we're handy with a gun,
We Ve a very special sense of fun,
we curse and bless.
Auden
9
W. H. You are the town, and we are the clock,
Auden We are the guardians of the gate in the rock,
the Two,
On your left, and on your right
In the day, and in the night
we are watching you
Wiser not to ask just what has occurred
To them that disobeyed our word;
to those
We were the whirlpool, we were the reef.
We were the formal nightmare, grief,
and the unlucky rose.
Climb up the cranes, learn the sailors^ words
When the ships from the islands, laden with birds
come in.
Tell you stories of fishing and other men's wives,
The expansive moments of constricted lives,
in the lighted inn.
By all means say of the peasant youth
^ That person there is in the truth '
we're kind
Tire of your little rut and look it.
You have to obey but you don't have to like it,
we do not mind.
But do not imagine we do not know
Or that what you hide with care won't show
at a glance.
Nothing is done, nothing is said
But don't make the mistake of thinking us dead;
I shouldn't dance
10
W H
Auden
When the green field comes ofF like a hd
Revealing what were much better hid,
unpleasant.
And look^ behind without a sound
The woods have come up and are standing round
in deadly crescent
And the bolt is sliding in its groove,
Outside the window is the black remov-
er’s van.
And now with sudden swift emergence
Come the women m dark glasses, the hump-backed
surgeons
and the scissor-man
This might happen any day
So be careful what you say
or do
Be clean, be tidy, oil the lock.
Trim the garden, wind the clock
Remember the Two
For Fm afraid in that case you'll have a fall,
We've been watching you over the garden wall
for hours.
The sky is darkening like a stain,
Something is going to fall like ram
and It won't be flowers
II
GEORGE BARKER
Ode
•3
ODE
George
Barker
O to us speak
. Bleak snow
With your mellifluous smooth tongue
What have we done wrong
What wrong have we done,
Our strongest perish without an answering blow
Our strongest young
Hour by hour grow weaker.
While we like prisoners look on
Awaiting our warmth and storage, our ally, the Sun
Return from the west
Our hour is come.
Release the squirrel from its frozen nest
The worm from solid mould,
Cremate to comfortable dust
Our old, and immediately reduce
The icy fortifications of our adversary.
Dissolve with lightning the imprisoning cold
Arm with miraculous beams our youth
Clothed in the habiliments of your warmth,
And resuscitate all fiery spirits from their death
RONALD BOTTRALL
Ploughing
The Future is not for Us
Blackbird
On a Grave of the Drowned
C
17
Rpnald
Bottrall
PLOUGHING
With an underthrust he jolts
The plough round from its furrow,
Deftly wristing his steamed
Pair to a corner row
Wave-lined through the mist-lake
Which nuzzles blue among the clods,
Come foraging in his wake
Two or three pied gulls
Life upturned towards sunlight
Is snatched to living death
By the seated parasite,
Black after the horseman
i8
THE FUTURE IS NOT FOR US
Rpnald
Bottrall
The future ts not for us, though we can set up
Our barriers, rest in our dead-embered
Sphere, till we come to pause over our last loving-cup
With death We are dismembered
Into a myriad broken shadows.
Each to himself reflected in a splinter of that glass
Which we once knew as cosmos, and the close
Of our long progress is hinted by the crass
Fogs creeping slow and darkly
From out the middle west We can humanize,
We can build new temples for the body.
Set our intellect to tilt against the spies
Of fortune, call this Chance or that Fate,
Estimate the logical worth of ' it may depend . .
But we know that we are at the gate
Leading out of the path
Which was to be an Amen having neither beginning nor
end
It was said, ' Take no thought for the morrow
Better, truly, to take no thought of to-day,
For we are bankrupt indeed if we cannot borrow
At least an expectation of future pay
Remains then but to seize
Each one alone, his smoky taper
And climb the stairs, knowing each step in the rear
Has crumpled beneath like tissue paper.
Disclosing the blue-black inkblot
Of vacuity beneath our sinking knees.
Then to set our fingers on the latch with the hope or fear
That within there lies the Is or Is Not
19
RpnaU
Bottrall
BLACKBIRD
Do you find, no burden in singing?
You catch up boughs, buds, leaves, anything
Even to the red-brick houses and whatever
Of scrubbed growth they may enclose, never
Querying your right to engulf your neighbours,
To pour them molten into the cup of your song.
You do not set one foot circumspectly along
Before the other, doling out your hours
In grams of sand,
Counting up to a thousand.
20
ON A GRAVE OF THE DROWNED
Kotiald
Bottrall
They whittle their life-stick who go
Down to the threshing jaws Goodbye
To the smutty lamp, goodbyes are hoarse,
Disused ' Draw the last pint * ' There in the
Oil-black bay the muttering nets, a gale
Blowing against the wet finger Gull once a
W pencilled against the gray, now
Dismantled, maimed and set upon by friends:
Beaten off by bloody beaks, crunched feathers
Strike the shale ledges, wearily take
The backward, forward of the foam
These went the watery bridge to know
Or numb, insurgent, on thole-pins spent
The dizzy creak of racked sinews and
Stalled with a thew-thrust, whipcord taut.
Jarring alarms of singing drowsiness
Then glaucous eyes crammed full
Above that mounded tale of many,
Disintegrated one, a beacon autumn tree
Irradiated from within swirls
Outward in eddies of russet light
21
ROY CAMPBELL
Horses on the Camargue
The Zebras
Choosing a Mast
23
Koy HORSES ON THE CAMARGUE
Campbell grey wastes of dread,
The haunt of shattered gulls where nothing moves
But in a shroud of silence like the dead,
I heard a sudden harmony of hooves,
And, turning, saw afar
A hundred snowy horses unconfined.
The stiver runaways of Neptune's car
Racing, spray-curled, like waves before the wind
Sons of the Mistral, fleet
As him with whose strong gusts they love to flee,
Who shod the flying thunders on their feet
And plumed them with the snortings of the sea,
Theirs is no earthly breed
Who only haunt the verges of the earth
And only on the sea's salt herbage feed —
Surely the great white breakers gave them birth.
For when for years a slave,
A horse of the Camargue, in alien lands,
Should catch some far-off fragrance of the wave
Carried far inland from his native sands,
Many have told the tale
Of how in fury, foaming at the rein.
He hurls his rider, and with lifted tail.
With coal-red eyes and cataracting mane,
Heading his course for home,
Though sixty foreign leagues before him sweep,
Will never rest until he breathes the foam
And hears the native thunder of the deep.
But when the great gusts rise
And lash their anger on these and coasts.
When the scared gulls career with mournful cries
And whirl across the waste like driven ghosts
When hail and fire converge,
The only souls to which they strike no pain
Roy
Campbell
Are the white-crested fillies of the surge
And the white horses of the windy plain
Then in their strength and pride
The stallions of the wrlderness rejoice,
They feel their Master's trident in their side,
And high and shrill they answer to his voice.
With white tails smoking free.
Long streaming manes, and arching necks, they show
Their kinship to their sisters of the sea —
And forward hurl their thunderbolts of snow.
Still out of hardship bred.
Spirits of power and beauty and delight
Have ever on such frugal pastures fed
And loved to course with tempests through the night.
THE ZEBRAS
Koy
Campbell
From the dark woods that breathe of fallen showers^
Harnessed with level rays in golden reins,
The zebras draw the dawn across the plains
Wading knee-deep among the scarlet flowers
The sunlight, zithering their flanks with fire.
Flashes between the shadows as they pass
Barred with electric tremors through the grass
Like wind along the gold strings of a lyre
Into the flushed air snorting rosy plumes
That smoulder round their feet in drifting fumes.
With dove-like voices call the distant fillies.
While round the herds the stallion wheels his flight,
Engine of beauty volted with delight,
To roll his mare among the trampled lilies
26
CHOOSING A MAST
This mast, new-shaved., through whom I rive the ropes,
Says she was once an oread of the slopes,
Graceful and tall upon the rocky highlands,
A slender tree, as vertical as noon.
And her low voice was lovely as the silence
Through which a fountain whistles to the moon.
Who now of the white spray must take the veil
And, for her songs, the thunder of the sail
Roy
Campbell
I chose her for her fragrance, when the spring
With sweetest resins swelled her fourteenth ring
And with live amber welded her young thews
I chose her for the glory of the Muse,
Smoother of forms, that her hard-knotted gram,
Grazed by the chisel, shaven by the plane,
Might from the steel as cool a burnish take
As from the bladed moon a windless lake
I chose her for her eagerness of flight
Where she stood tiptoe on the rocky height
Lifted by her own perfume to the sun.
While through her rustling plumes with eager sound
Her eagle spirit, with the gale at one.
Spreading wide pinions, would have spurned the ground
And her own sleeping shadow, had they not
With thymy fragrance charmed her to the spot.
Lover of song, I chose this mountain pine
Not only for the straightness of her spine
But for her songs for there she loved to sing
Through a long noon^s repose of wave and wing —
The fluvial swirling of her scented hair
Sole rill of song in all that windless air
And her slim form the naiad of the stream
Afloat upon the languor of its theme,
27
Kpy And for the soldier's fare on which she fed —
Campbell Her wine the azure, and the snow her bread;
And for her stormy watches on the height —
For only out of solitude or strife
Are born the sons of valour and delight,
And lastly for her rich exulting life
That with the wind stopped not its singing breath
But carolled on, the louder for its death
Under a pine, when summer days were deep,
We loved the most to lie in love or sleep
And when in long hexameters the west
Rolled his grey surge, the forest for his lyre.
It was the pines that sang us to our rest
Loud in the wind and fragrant in the fire,
With legioned voices swelling all night long.
From Pelion to Provence, their storm of song.
It was the pines that fanned us in the heat.
The pines, that cheered us in the time of sleet.
For which sweet gifts I set one dryad free —
No longer to the wind a rooted foe,
This nymph shall wander where she longs to be
And with the blue north wind arise and go,
A silver huntress with the moon to run
And fly through rainbows with the rising sun.
And when to pasture in the glittering shoals
The guardian mistral drives his thundering foals.
And when like Tartar horsemen racing free
We ride the snorting fillies of the sea.
My pine shall be the archer of the gale
While on the bending willow curves the sail
From whose great bow the long keel shooting home
Shall fly, the feathered arrow of the foam.
28
WALTER DE LA MARE
The Strange Spirit
To KM.
29
THE STRANGE SPIRIT
Age shall not daunt me, nor sorrow for youth that is gone.
If thou lead on before me,
If thy voice in the darkness and bleak of that final night
Still Its enchantment weave over me
Thou hauntest the stealing shadow of rock and tree,
HovVing on wings invisible smilest at me,
Fannest the secret scent of the moth-hung flower.
Making of musky eve thy slumber-bower
But not without danger thy fleeting presence abides
In a mind lulled in dreaming
Lightning bepictures thy gaze When the thunder raves,
And the tempest rain is streaming.
Betwixt cloud and earth thy falcon-head leans near —
Menacing earth-bound spirit betrayed to fear
Cold then as shadow of death, that icy glare
Pierces the window of sense to the chamber bare
Busied o^er dust, engrossed o'er the clod-close root,
Fire of the beast m conflict bleeding,
Goal of the coursing fish on its ocean tryst.
Wind of the weed's far seeding.
Whose servant art thou? Who gave thee earth, sky
and sea
For uttermost kingdom and ranging? Who bade thee
to be
Bodiless, lovely, snare, and delight of the soul,
Fantasy's beacon, of thought the uttermost goal?
When I told my love thou wert near, she bowed, and
sighed.
With passion her pale face darkened
Trembling the lips that to mine in silence replied.
Sadly that music she hearkened
30
Walter
de la
Mare
Miracle thine the babe in her bosom at rest,
Flowerlike, hidden loose-folded on gentle breast —
And we laughed together in quiet, unmoved by fear.
Knowing that, life of life, thou wast hovering near.
3
Walter
dc la
Mare
TO KM.
Walter
de la
Mare
And there was a horse m the kings stables and the name
of the horse was, Genius
We sat and talked It was June, and the summer light
Lay fair upon ceiling and wall as the day took flight
Tranquil the room — with its colours and shadows wan,
Cherries, and china, and flowers and the hour slid on
Dark hair, dark eyes, slim fingers — you made the tea,
Pausing with spoon uplifted, to speak to me
Lulled by our thoughts and our voices, how happy were
we*
And, musing, an old, old riddle crept into my head,
' Supposing I just say, Horse in a field,' I said,
‘ What do you seel ' And we each made answer ' I
A roan — long tail, and a red-brick house, near by '
I — an old cart-horse and rain^ ^ ^ Oh no, not rain,
A mare with a long legged foal by a pond — oh plain^
‘ And I, a hedge — and an elm — and the shadowy green
Sloping gently up to the blue, to the West, I mean*' . .
And now on the field that I see night's darkness lies
A brook brawls near there are stars in the empty skies.
The grass is deep, and dense As I push my way.
From sour-nettled ditch sweeps fragrance of clustering
May
I come to a stile And lo, on the further side,
With still, umbrageous, night-clad fronds, spread wide,
A giant cedar broods And m crescent's gleam —
A horse, milk-pale, sleek-shouldered, engendered of
dream*
Startled, it lifts its muzzle, deep eyes agaze,
Silk-plaited mane . . .
' Whose pastures are thine to graze?
32
Creature, delicate, lovely, with womanlike head, Walter
Sphinx-like, gazelle-hke? Where tarries thy rider? ^ de la
I said Aiare
And I scanned by that sinking slip's thin twinkling shed
A high-pooped saddle of leather, night-darkened red,
Stamped with a pattern of gilding, and over it thrown
A cloak, chain-buckled, with one great glamorous stone.
Wan as the argent moon when o'er fields of wheat
Like Dian she broods, and steals to Endymion's feet
Interwoven with silver that cloak from seam to seam
And at toss of that head from its damascened bridle did
beam
Mysterious glare in the dead of the dark . . .
' Thy name.
Fantastical steed? Thy pedigree?
Peace, out of Storm, is the tale? Or Beauty, of Jeopardyl '
The water grieves Not a footfall — and midnight here
Why tarries Darkness's bird? Mounded and clear
Slopes to yon hill with its stars the moorland sweet
There sigh the airs of far heaven And the dreamer's
feet
Scatter the leagues of paths secret to where at last meet
Roads called Wickedness, Righteousness, broad-flung or
strait,
And the third that leads on to the Queen of fair Elfland's
gate
This then the horse that I see, swift as the wind.
That none may master or mount, and none may bind —
But she, his Mistress, cloaked, and at throat that gem —
Dark head, dark eyes, slim shoulder . . .
God-speed, K M *
D
33
T. S. ELIOT
The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock
La Figlia Che Piange
The Hollow Men
Triumphal March
T.S.
Eltot
THE LOVE SONG OF j ALFRED PRUFROCK
S’ to credcssc che mta nsposta fosse
A persona che mat tornasse al mondo,
Questa famma staria senza ptu scosse.
Ma perctocche gtammai dt questo fondo
Mon torno vivo alcun, stodo tl vero,
Senza tema d’mfamta tt rtspondo
Let us go then, you and 1,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table,
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question .
Oh, do not ask, ^ What is it? '
Let us go and make our visit
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-
panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-
panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap.
And seeing that it was a soft October night.
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep
56
T S.
Eliot
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes,
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet,
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate,
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, ' Do I dare? ' and ' Do I dare? '
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair —
(They will say. ' How his hair is growing thin*
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin.
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple
pin —
(They will say. ' But how his arms and legs are thin*
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse
For I have known them all already, known them all
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons,
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
37
T. S. And I have known the eyes already, known them all —
Elwt The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pm,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall.
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?
And I have known the arms already, known them all —
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair^)
Is it a perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that he along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers.
Asleep tired or it malingers.
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald)
brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet — and here^s no great matter;
58
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker T S
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and Elwt
snicker,
And in short, I was afraid
And would It have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea.
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and
me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile.
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question.
To say ' I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, 1 shall tell you all ' —
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say ' That is not what I meant at all
That is not it, at all *
And would it have been worth it, after all.
Would it have been worth while.
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled
streets.
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that
trail along the floor —
And this, and so much more? —
It is impossible to say just what I mean*
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on
a screen
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
' That is not it at all.
That IS not what I meant, at all/
39
T. S. No ^ I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Eltot Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two.
Advise the prince, no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use.
Politic, cautious, and meticulous,
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse,
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous —
Almost, at times, the Fool.
I grow old I grow old
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled
Shall I part my hair behind ? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the
beach
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
40
LA FIGLIA CHE PIANGE T S,
^ Eliot
U cfiiam te memoretn vtrgo
Stand on the highest pavement of the stair —
Lean on a garden urn —
Weave, weave the sunlight m your hair —
Clasp your flowers to you with a pained surprise —
Fling them to the ground and turn
With a fugitive resentment in your eyes
But weave, weave the sunlight in your hair.
So I would have had him leave.
So I would have had her stand and grieve.
So he would have left
As the soul leaves the body torn and bruised.
As the mind deserts the body it has used
I should find
Some way incomparably light and deft,
Some way we both should understand.
Simple and faithless as a smile and shake of the hand.
She turned away, but with the autumn weather
Compelled my imagination many days.
Many days and many hours
Her hair over her arms and her arms full of flowers.
And I wonder how they should have been together!
I should have lost a gesture and a pose
Sometimes these cogitations still amaze
The troubled midnight and the noon's repose.
41
T.S.
Eltot
THE HOLLOW MEN
A penny for the Old Guy
I
We are the hollow men
We are the stulFed men
Leaning together
Headpiece hlled with straw. Alas*
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion,
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us — if at all — not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men
n
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star
42
Let me be no nearer T S
In death^s dream kingdom Eliot
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer —
Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom
III
This is the dead land
This IS cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone
IV
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
45
T.S.
Eltot
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men
V
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At Jive o'clock tn the morning
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow rrn, i i
r or 1 nine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow , p ,
Ktje IS very long
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
44
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
T 5.
EUot
For Thtne ts the Kingdom
For Thtne IS
Life IS
For Thtne is the
This ts the way the world ends
This IS the way the world ends
This ts the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper
T.S.
Eliot
TRIUMPHAL MARCH
Stone, bronze, stone, steel, stone, oakleaves, horses^ heels
Over the paving
And the flags And the trumpets And so many eagles
How many? Count them And such a press of people
We hardly knew ourselves that day, or knew the City.
This is the way to the temple, and we so many crowding
the way
So many waiting, how many waiting? what did it matter,
on such a day?
Are they coming? No, not yet You can see some
eagles
And hear the trumpets
Here they come Is he coming?
The natural wakeful life of our Ego is a perceiving.
We can wait with our stools and our sausages
What comes first? Can you see? Tell us It is
y, 800,000 rifles and carbines,
102,000 machine guns,
28.000 trench mortars,
y3,ooo field and heavy guns,
I cannot tell how many projectiles, mines and fuses,
13.000 aeroplanes,
24.000 aeroplane engines,
3'o,ooo ammunition waggons,
now 3'3',ooo army waggons,
11.000 field kitchens
i,iyo field bakeries.
What a time that took. Will it be he now? No,
Those are the golf club Captains, these the Scouts,
And now the society gymnasUcjue de Poissy
And now come the Mayor and the Liverymen. Look
There he is now, look.
46
There is no interrogation in those eyes T S,
Or in the hands, quiet over the horse^s neck, EUot
And the eyes watchful, waiting, perceiving, indifferent.
O hidden under the dove^s wing, hidden in the turtle^s
breast.
Under the palmtree at noon, under the running water
At the still point of the turning world O hidden.
Now they go up to the temple Then the sacrifice
Now come the virgins bearing urns, urns containing
Dust
Dust
Dust of dust, and now
Stone, bronze, stone, steel, stone, oakleaves, horses^ heels
Over the paving
That IS all we could see. But how many eagles^ and
how many trumpets *
(And Easter Day, we didn't get to the country.
So we took young Cyril to church And they rang a bell
And he said right out loud, crumpets )
Don't throw away that sausage,
It'll come in handy. He's artful. Please, will you
Give US a light?
Light
Light
Et les soldats fatsatent la haiel ILS LA FAISAIENT.
47
WILLIAM EMPSON
Arachne
Villanelle
William
Empson
ARACHNE
^Twixt devil and deep sea, man hacks his caves.
Birth, death, one, many, what is true, and seems,
Earth's vast hot iron, cold space's empty waves
King spider, walks the velvet roof of streams.
Must bird and fish, must god and beast avoid.
Dance, like nine angels, on pin-point extremes
His gleaming bubble between void and void,
Tribe-membrane, that by mutual tension stands.
Earth's surface film, is at a breath destroyed.
Bubbles gleam brightest with least depth of lands
But two IS least can with full tension strain.
Two molecules, one, and the film disbands
.We two suffice But oh beware, whose vain
Hydroptic soap my meagre water saves
Male spiders must not be too early slain
VILLANELLE
It IS the pain, it is the pain, endures
Your chemic beauty burned my muscles through
Poise of my hands reminded me of yours
What later purge from this deep toxin cures?
What kindness now could the old salve renew?
It is the pain, it is the pain, endures
The infection slept (custom or change inures)
And when paints secondary phase was due
Poise of my hands reminded me of yours
How safe I felt, whom memory assures,
Rich that your grace safely by heart I knew
It IS the pain, it is the pain, endures
My stare drank deep beauty that still allures
My heart pumps yet the poison draught of you.
Poise of my hands reminded me of yours
You are still kind whom the same shape immures
Kind, and beyond adieu We miss our cue
It IS the pain, it is the pain, endures
Poise of my hands reminded me of yours
Wtlltam
Empson
DAVID GASCOYNE
Susan, a Carving by Eric Gill
Slate
In Perpetuum Mobile
David
Gascoyne
SUSAN
A carving by Eric Gill
The fingers the air caress your face;
you are |<r smooth and yet your stone is firm,
inev^li^fej^ like volcanic rock
that biirsffhg molten through to air
at once sets firm and is unalterable
The rock has formed spontaneously your face,
and natural as the waves that run through corn
your curved and flowing hair, your petalled lips,
and empty eyes that show no soul although a soul is there.
SLATE
Behind the higher hill
sky slides away to fringe of crumbling cloud;
out of the gorse-grown slope
the quarry bites its tessellated tiers
The rain-eroded slate packs loose and flat
in broken sheets and frigid swathes of stone,
like withered petals of a great grey flower.
The quarry is deserted now, within
a scooped-out niche of rubble, dust and silt
a single slate-roofed hut to ruin falls.
A petrified chaos
the quarry is, the slate makes still-born waves,
or crumbling clouds like those
behind the hill, monotonously grey.
David
Gascoyne
David
Gascoyne
IN PERPETUUM MOBILE
Too tightly tangled are mixed notions,
Wide ocean's wrack- worn tracks trace whorlmg wheels,
The vampire sun sucks up the sea's salt scum
And twists it into cloud that rolls or reels
In woven webs across the crystal sky,
The sun's barbaric cock'rel comb office
Royally rages, reaching many miles,
Revolving regent rays that outwardly expire,
The system which has sun for centre spins
Round other systems that are cogs for more
Which act on others to the orbit's end, —
Continual correlation, endless war
Unending Motion changes as it goes,
Like glyptic flame or shifting waterfall.
One moment is, then metamorphosis
Alters what was before to not at all
Disintegration is th'uncertain seed
Of Motion, making all seen things seem
A nystagmus, leaving no proof to show
That what we saw or shall see is not dream.
OLIVER GOGARTY
The Plum Tree by the House
With a Com from Syracuse
51
Oliver
Gogarty
THE PLUM TREE BY THE HOUSE
In morning light my damson showed
Its airy branches oversnowed
On all their quickening fronds,
That tingled where the early sun
Was flowing soft as silence on
Palm trees by coral ponds
Out of the dark of sleep I come
To find the clay break into bloom,
The black boughs all in white*
I said, I must stand still and watch
This glory, strive no more to match
With similes things fair
I am not fit to conjure up
A bird that's white enough to hop
Unstained in such a tree
Leave me alone with my delight
To store up joy against the night.
This moment leave to me*
Why should a poet strain his head
To make his mind a marriage bed,
Shall Beauty cease to bear?
There must be things which never shall
Be matched or made symmetrical
On Earth or in the Air,
Branches that Chinese draughtsmen drew.
Which none may find an equal to.
Unless he enter there
Where none may live — and more's the pity! —
The Perfect, The Forbidden City,
That's built — Ah, God knows where*
Then leave me while 1 have the light
To fill my mind with growths of white,
Think of them longer than
Their budding hour, their springing day,
Until my mind is more than May;
And, may be, I shall plan
To make them yet break out like this
And blossom where their image is,
More lasting and more deep
Than coral boughs in light inurned,
When they are to the earth returned.
And I am turned to sleep.
Oliver
Gogarty
Oliver
Gogarty
WITH A COIN FROM SYRACUSE
Where is the hand to trace
The contour of her face.
The nose so straight and fine
Down from the forehead's line;
The curved and curtal lip
Full in companionship
With that lip's overplus;
Proud and most sumptuous,
Which draws its curve within,
Swelling the faultless chin^
What artist knows the tech-
nique of the Doric neck*
The line that keeps with all
The features vertical.
Crowned with the thickly rolled
And corrugated gold^
The curious hands are lost
On the sweet Asian coast,
That made the coins enwrought,
(Fairer than all they bought)
With emblems round the proud
Untroubled face of god
And goddess Or they lie
At Syracuse hard by
The Fountain Arethuse.
Therefore from Syracuse
1 send this face to her.
Whose face is lovelier.
6o
Oliver
Gogarty
It shows on the reverse
Pherenikos the horse.
And that's as it should be.
Horses she loves, for she
Is come of the old stock.
Lords of the lime-stone rock,
And acres fit to breed
Many a likely steed.
Straight in the back and bone,
With head high, like her own.
And blood that, tamed and mild.
Can suddenly go wild
Alas, and as remote
As hers around whose throat
The curving fishes swim,
As round a fountain's brim.
6i
RICHARD GOODMAN
Poem with Cowslips
Poem, 1935
63
Richard
Goodman
POEM WITH COWSLIPS
Who walked our English fields of late
and saw their trembling April born
from fern-frond, leaf-hthe, lance of corn,
the hanging kestrel leashed with light,
the willow-green, the whitlow-white,
the daffodils", oh, catch-breath fete,
the mass and mutiny of dawn,
comrade, to you I send these few,
these English, cowslips softly signed
still with that silver-point, the dew,
to prove in other fields than these
here in my heart and secret mind
a beauty flares m your retreat,
these cowslips" startled loveliness,
pale gold, the havoc of your feet
64
POEM, 1933
Huge images of death lurk m my brain
and track me where I go,
here in this city, here in Summer^s plain,
I am smothered under shadow
Not being with friends nor even this tall day
where the light sings
brings peace, release from these* I cannot play
nor find my joy in things
They are my thoughts of war and war's disease,
I move with men
and watch an equal dark behind each face
striking them iron
Over my love and breaking on my joy
this fear descends
I see guns shatter and slow fog destroy
my friends, my lovely friends
Fjchard
Goodman
F. R HIGGINS
Father and Son
Padraic O Conaire — Gaelic Storyteller
67
F K
Htggtns
FATHER AND SON
Only last week, walking the hushed fields
Of our most lovely Meath, now thinned by November,
I came to where the road from Laracor leads
To the Boyne river — that seemed more lake than river.
Stretched in uneasy light and stript of reeds
And walking longside an old weir
Of my people's, where nothing stirs — only the shadowed
Leaden flight of a heron up the lean air —
I went unmanly with grief, knowing how my father.
Happy though captive in years, walked last with me there.
Yes, happy in Meath with me for a day
He walked, taking stock of herds hid in their own
breathing.
And naming colts, gusty as wind, once steered by his
hand
Lightnings winked m the eyes that were half shy in
greeting
Old friends — the wild blades, when he gallivanted the
land.
For that proud, wayward man now my heart breaks — >
Breaks for that man whose mind was a secret eyrie,
Whose kind hand was sole signet of his race,
Who curbed me, scorned my green ways, yet increasingly
loved me
Till Death drew its grey blind down his face
And yet I am pleased that even my reckless ways
Are living shades of his rich calms and passions —
Witnesses for him and for those faint namesakes
With whom now he is one, under yew branches.
Yes, one in a graven silence no bird breaks
68
PADRAIC O CONAIRE— GAELIC STORYTELLER F K
(Died in the Fall of 1928) ^
They've paid the last respects in sad tobacco
And silent is this wakehouse in its haze,
They've paid the last respects, and now their whiskey
Flings laughing words on mouths of prayer and praise,
And so young couples huddle by the gables,
O let them grope home through the hedgy night —
Alone I'll mourn my old friend, while the cold dawn
Thins out the holy candlelight.
Respects are paid to one loved by the people,
Ah, was he not — among our mighty poor —
The sudden wealth cast on those pools of darkness,
Those bearing, just, a star’s faint signature^
And so he was to me, close friend, near brother,
Dear Padraic of the wide and sea-cold eyes —
So loveable, so courteous and noble.
The very West was in his soft replies.
They'll miss his heavy stick and stride in Wicklow —
Ffis story-talking down Winetavern Street,
Where old men sitting in the wizen daylight
Ffave kept an edge upon his gentle wit.
While women on the grassy streets of Galway,
Who hearken for his passing — but in vain,
Shall hardly tell his step as shadows vanish
Through archways of forgotten Spain
Ah, they'll say. Padraic's gone again exploring.
But now down glens of brightness, O he'll find
An alehouse overflowing with wise Gaelic
That's braced m vigour by the bardic mind.
69
F, K> And there his thoughts shall find their own forefathers —
Htggtns In minds to whom our heights of race belong,
In crafty men, who ribbed a ship or turned
The secret joinery of song
Alas, death mars the parchment of his forehead,
And yet for him, I know, the earth is mild —
The windy fidgets of September grasses
Can never tease a mind that loved the wild,
So drink his peace — this grey juice of the barley
Runs with a light that ever pleased his eye —
While old flames nod and gossip on the hearthstone
And only the young winds cry
70
CECIL DAY LEWIS
From Feathers to Iron (i)
The Magnetic Mountain (3)
The Magnetic Mountain (21)
The Magnetic Mountain (24)
71
Cecil
Day
Detvis
FROM FEATHERS TO IRON (i)
Suppose that we, to-morrow or the next day,
Came to an end — in storm the shafting broken,
Or a mistaken signal, the flange lifting —
Would that be premature, a text for sorrow?
Say what endurance gives or death denies us
Lovers proved in its creation, not eternity
Like leaf or linnet the true heart's affection
Is born, dies later, asks no reassurance
Over dark wood rises one dawn felicitous,
Bright through awakened shadows fall her crystal
Cadenzas, and once for all the wood is quickened
So our joy visits us, and it suffices
Nor fear we now to live who in the valley
Of the shadow of life have found a causeway.
For love restores the nerve and love is under
Our feet resilient Shall we be weary^
Some say we walk out of Time altogether
This way into a region where the primrose
Shows an immortal dew, sun at meridian
Stands up for ever and in scent the lime-tree
This is a land which later we may tell of
Here-now we know, what death cannot diminish
Needs no replenishing, yet certain are, though
Dying were well enough, to live is better
72
Passion has grown full man by his first birthday
Running across the bean-fields in a south wind,
Fording the river mouth to feel the tide-race —
Child's play that was, though proof of our possessions
Cecil
Day
Dewts
Now our research is done, measured the shadow,
The plains mapped out, the hills a natural boundary
Such and such is our country There remains to
Plough up the meadowland, reclaim the marshes.
73
Cecil
Day
Dewts
THE MAGNETIC MOUNTAIN (3)
Somewhere beyond the railheads
Of reason, south or north.
Lies a magnetic mountain
Riveting sky to earth
No line IS laid so far
Ties rusting in a stack
And sleepers — dead men's bones
Mark a defeated track
Kestrel who yearly changes
His tenement of space
At the last hovering
May signify that place
Iron in the soul.
Spirit steeled in fire.
Needle trembling on truth —
These shall draw me there
The planets keep their course.
Blindly the bee comes home.
And I shall need no sextant
To prove Em getting warm.
Near that miraculous mountain
Compass and clock must fail.
For space stands on its head there
And time chases its tail.
74
There's iron for the asking
Will keep all winds at bay,
Girders to take the leaden
Strain of a sagging sky
Oh there's a mine of metal,
Enough to make me rich
And build right over chaos
A cantilever bridge
Cecil
Day
luCWtS
Cecil
Day
JLewts
THE MAGNETIC MOUNTAIN (21)
Third Enemy speaks
God IS a proposition.
And we that prove him are his priests, his chosen
From bare hypothesis
Of strata and wind, or stars and tides, watch me
Construct his universe,
A working model of my majestic notions,
A sum done in the head
Last week I measured the light, his little finger,
The rest is a matter of time
God is an electrician,
And they that worship him must worship him
In ampere and in volt
Scrap sun and moon, your twilight of false gods
X IS not here or there,
Whose lightning scrawls brief cryptograms on sky,
Easy for us to solve.
Whose motions fit our formulae, whose temple
Is a pure apparatus
God is a statistician
Offer him all the data, tell him your dreams
What IS your lucky number?
How do you react to bombs? Have you a rival?
Do you really love your wife?
Get yourself taped Put soul upon the table
Switch on the arc-lights, watch
Heart's beat, the secret agents of the blood.
Let every cell be observed
76
God IS a Good Physician,
Gives fruit for hygiene, crops for calories
Don't touch that dirty man,
Don't drink from the same cup, sleep in one bed.
Cecil
Day
Dewts
You know He would not like it
Young men, cut out those visions, they're bad for
the eyes
ril show you face to face
Eugenics, Eupeptics and Euthanasia,
The clinic Trinity
77
Cecil
Day
L^ewts
THE MAGNETIC MOUNTAIN (24)
Tempt me no more, for I
Have known the lightning's hour.
The poet's inward pride,
The certainty of power
Bayonets are closing round
I shrink, yet I must wring
A living from despair
And out of steel a song
Though song, though breath be short.
I'll share not the disgrace
Of those that ran away
Or never left the base
Comrades, my tongue can speak
No comfortable words,
Calls to a forlorn hope,
Gives work and not rewards
Oh keep the sickle sharp
And follow still the plough
Others may reap, though some
See not the winter through.
Father, who endest all.
Pity our broken sleep.
For we he down with tears
And waken but to weep
And if our blood alone
Will melt this iron earth.
Take It It IS well spent
Easing a saviour's birth.
78
FRANCIS MACNAMARA
Sea and Roses
79
Francis
Aiacnamara
SEA AND ROSES
Friend, am I silent? Know that here,
'twixt gardened hill and the bay's soft wavelets.
Here on this beach, this very sand
and pebbles we crunch iii heavy walking,
Once I was ambushed, guileless h
with Youth for a guide, by Love corrupted
Love and his minion Golden Hair,
who captive held me in strands well knotted *
Here — oh, now 'tis a score of years * —
we sat, she and 1, one summer twilight,
Tossing maybe that pebble, or that,
to break the wavelet in love with breaking*
^ Why do they stop? ' we gaily asked,
' retreat at the beach's first slope upward?
Why not take the garden by storm?
they're timid, as cold* love ordered levels*
' Ah, so on-coming* friends they seem,
then shrink back, dreading an impropriety*
Sea more false in its harmless will
to calm, than yielding to lust of storm-winds* '
Gaily we boasted, ' Sure, no law
were mighty enough to hold in limits —
None to make constant were required* —
a love we know of* so headlong-rushing,
* Burning . . ' Ah* now where is that love?
In brooding memory here it smoulders*
Waves, are you mocking? Wait, I recall
a something then in your tone, sarcastic*
8o
Closing our ears, we kissed! and strove
of certainty still to feel more certain!
What were you saying, cynics? Ah!
' They happen on figs just ripe for picking. . . .
' Love eternal? ha ha! ' you cracked,
in sudden resonant laughs collapsing,
* Yes! ' then hissed, ' lived wholly, an hour
IS — ' ah! your sigh of mock-rapture — ' ages!
'To it, you lovers * redeem your vows
this evening, prove unwearying passion! '
Friend, believe me, she knows the trade,
this painted sterile maiden, the ocean!
See — and think how we saw and felt —
those frothy tongues up the sand come licking;
Filling ears and eyes with the sweet
mad irritation of coming and going!
See them curving over to kiss,
exposing by chance their inmost beauties!
Hear the short sharp gasp as they sink,
all spent with pleasure, clutching at pebbles!
Weakly they towsle bunches of weed,
while filling the air with winy odours:
Steam of amorous sweat you inhale,
still fanned by breath from a cool horizon. . . ,
Short the interval* comes a wave
'Again* ' exhorting, ' again* ' — you hear them . . .
No? they are sighing sadly? — ^Friend!
were you a lady, and I more youthful,
Francis
Macnamara
G
8i
Francis
Macnamara
Bawdy you'd hear them* Yes, and ha*
they still with the passers-by seek favour,
Singing, grave now, a canting song
for friends in mood to be reminiscent*
Ho* what touching appeals they make
to memory, mind what pretty details*
There her shoe, as she walked, came off . .
I tied it there she'd a yellow garter*
Look, up there is the garden-seat
where often we watched through those same tree-
tops —
Palm and gum in a northern bay
by hills embosomed — those sails now passing,
Watched their passage from branch to branch,
and laughed to pretend the sail a squirrel*
That's the villa, with fuchsia hedge
Oh waves, enough of your sweet reminders*
Cawing of rooks, or village folk
with tales of the dear old home, have touched me.
Waves of Ocean are you* now cease
this maudlin ballad, you proved impostors*
Sigh with me, do you? break your hearts
for yesterday? Oh* eternal breakers .
Pious turned, you moralise too
on beauty of love's re-birth celestial*
Memory's monk, I'm still to haunt
this haunted beach, and rooms of the villa.
Sole, I'm to seek my thorny rose,
return to her only where she's absent*
82
Honeyed times with a ghost Til have,
still hearing, even behind closed windows,
Strident whispers up from the sea,
to warn me — intellectual fal-lals!
Ah! now Friend, you mock me in turn!
Pursue that maiden ahead there, should I?
Walking alone, you say, she seeks
this day's (or at least this evening's) pleasure!
Trim young body . . Oh, see the flick
her cane gave, sending that sea-grass flying!
What's she dreaming or scheming, eh?
and what to her are the wild waves saying?
Might be amusing Bah! just see
the mincing gait of her, meant to ravish . . .
There ^ and the soulful gaze genteel
around at the hills — by chance behind us!
Foam-sprung Venus? Suburban foam!
and — ^well, there's no knowing. . , . Oh, but truly!
Waves of the one same sea that laves
the Cyprian shore, you might do better!
Hear them sniggering now : ^ Two men
in company . . high-bred talk fastidious*
Ha! if one should return this way
alone, we'd see — we have often seen it! '
Well, and doesn't the local nymph —
what more is Venus in high Olympus? —
Please, with limited charm, but will
more pious. . . . Friend, I've a mind to leave
you —
Francis
Macnarmra
83
Francis
Macnamara
Just to out-face those wet guffaws^ —
and follow her, ha^ be snared eyes open
Shocked? you had thought this holy ground,
with memory stirring Yes’ to ventures’
Faithful I as the sailor’ taught
(as he) by the wavelets deeply knowing
Sailor keeping an edge on love
by crossing its blade with new attractions’
Pleasure of sense’ there love's most true
to memory Ah, this beach that evening!
Infidelity best keeps faith’
not monkish hoarding of Ah, that evening!
Minx ahead there, can you again
(I challenge you) sow this beach with roses?
Come’ what then was lust of the eye
but earlier joys remembered swiftly?
Pleasure prepared that pleasure, yes’
when all I had loved in hills and gardens —
Oh, and most (I own) in the sea’ —
I saw in her person here embodied . . .
Roses of Eden, gold more fine
than Ophir But what's for us the moral?
Ah, the present’ live in the flash
of no duration . . . memento mon’
Loves that invite to anchor, ho’
we'll raid them, and make the sea our harbour!
This, oh good, oh wise little waves,
we'll take as your drift, — so make love deathless!
84
Come! lest even I fix this faith,
in wine we'll forget it, Friend, and keep it^
Death we'll toast, and the present hour
that trembles between his threats and triumphs^
Francis
Macnamara
CHARLES MADGE
The Times
On Apprehending
Birdseye
87
CharUs THE TIMES
^ Time wasted and time spent
Daytime with used up wit
Time to stand, time to sit
Or wait and see if it
Happens, happy event
For war is eating now
Waking, shaking off death
Leaving the white sheets
And dull head who repeats
The dream of his defeats
And drawing colder breath
For war is eating now.
Growing older, going
Where the water runs
Black as death, and guns
Explode the sinking suns
Blowing like hell, snowing
For war IS eating now.
88
ON APPREHENDING
Master to me* fly turning clouds to walls
approaching steep to life if that is square
The hold on me of the held-onto hand
shows where bone lies, and if I ever knew
the touched quick once, big now is here instead
Given this morning not more true or untrue
than the known inspiration of air
something which is muscular to have said
a rock or wingbrace to understand
between standing room and space that falls.
The step on step of incident is where
IS the heard voice of blood that calls and calls
Each echoed minute is its other too
and each round clasp of things face is and head
of body risen from unseen now sand.
Charles
Madge
S9
Charles
Madge
BIRDSEYE
In the city without classes, white
Stand block on block houses, bare
And the trees wave their heads, light
Throws down its challenge, everywhere
Singing heard in the city, joy
Runs on athletic feet, free
The playgrounds, beautiful children, boy
And girl run over the grass, see
Clothes cast off, man appears, plain
The strength under poverty, play
Echoes in happy dialect, brain
And muscles are building this all day
We from our aeroplane gaze, high
In air from where white clouds roll, stare
For a moment lost in wonder, by
The white city amazed, dare
We join the chorus that laughs up^ how
In unison that song singing, pass
Out of our rags, our badness? now
We fly in shadow on the grass
90
CHARLOTTE MEW
Fin de Fete
The Rambling Sailor
Domus Caedet Arborem
91
Facsimile of
the poem by
Charlotte Mew
as copied in pencil
by Thomas Hardy
(see page x)
9 ^
FIN DE FETE
Sweetheart, for such a day
One mustn't grudge the score.
Here, then, it's all to pay.
It's Good-night at the door
Good-night and good dreams to you, —
Do you remember the picture-book thieves
Who left two children sleeping in a wood the long night
through,
And how the birds came down and covered them
with leaves ?
So you and I should have slept, — But now,
Oh, what a lonely head*
With just the shadow of a waving bough
In the moonlight over your bed
Charlotte
Mew
93
Charlotte
A4ew
THE RAMBLING SAILOR
In the old back streets o’ Pimlico,
On the docks at Monte Video,
At the Ring o' Bells on Plymouth Hoe
He'm arter me now wheerever I go
An' dirty nights when the wind do blow
I can hear him sing-songin' up from sea
Oh * no man nor woman's bin friend to me
An' to-day I'm feared wheer to-morrow I'll be,
Sin' the night the moon lay whist and white
On the road goin' down to the Lizard Light
When I heard him hummin' behind me
^ Oh ' look, boy, look your sweetheart’ s eyes
So deep as sea an so blue as skws,
An ’tis better to k^ss than to chide her
If they tell ’ee no tales, they’ll tell ’ee no lies
Of the little brown mouse
That creeps into the house
To he sleepin so quiet beside her
Oh ' hold ’ee long, but hold ’ee light
Your true mate’s hand when you fnd him,
Me’ll help ’ee home on a darksome night
Wt’ a somethin’ bright
That hem holdin tight
In the hand that he k^eps behind him,
* Oh! sit ’ee down to your whack o’ pies,
So hot’s the stew and the brew likewise.
But whiles you’m scrapin’ the plates and dishes,
A’ gapin’ down in the shiversome sea
For the delicate mossels inside o’ we
Theer’s a passe I o’ hungry fshes ’
94
At the Haltc des Marins at Saint Nazatrc
I cussed him, sittin^ astride his chair,
An' Christmas Eve on the Mary Clare
I pitched him a'down the hatch-way stair
But ' Shoutin' and cloutin's nothing to me,
Nor the hop nor the skip nor the jump,' says he,
' For 1 be walkin' on every quay — '
^ So look, look in the dear maid's eyes
And take the true man s hand
And eat your fill o' your whack d pies
Till you m starin' up wheer the sea-crow flies
Wi' your head lyin' soft in the sand '
Charlotte
A4ew
Charlotte
Mew
DOMUS CAEDET ARBOREM
Ever since the great planes were murdered at the end of
the gardens
The city, to me, at night has the look of a Spirit brooding
crime,
As if the dark houses watching the trees from dark
windows
Were simply biding their time
9 ^
SUSAN MILES
Death's Pale Play-thing
Scales
H
97
Susan
Miles
DEATH'S PALE PLAY-THING
Propped on pillows,
Huddled and chill,
Death's pale play-thing
Prattles still,
Death's pale play-thing
Unaware
Whose the sweat-beads
That thrid his hair,
Whose the birthday
Candles burning
In the rings where his blind bright
Eyes are turning,
Whose fantastic
Fingers fleck
Red and white
On lip and cheek,
(With foam and blood
On cheek and lip
Painting the puppet's
Last make-up )
Blind to Life's baubles.
Deaf to Death's rattle,
Death's pale play-thing
Has ceased to prattle.
98
Susan
Aiiles
SCALES
The pale claw that was once a child's pink-fleshed hand
TrembleS; desirous
Not a father's,
Not a mother's
Grasp can satisfy
A trained nurse with detached aplomb holds out toys.
This one?
Or that one?
Not the first one, not the second, but the third
Is grasped
And now the fragile fingers that will soon be fragile
bones
Rattle gleefully a pair of tin scales,
Weighing in the balance — till a last haemorrhage spurtles —
Neither good and evil.
Love and duty.
Nor yet life and death,
But haporths of shining rice,
Pennorths of rich brown chicory.
And two sugar biscuits
99
HAROLD MONRO
Bitter Sanctuary
The Garden
lOI
Harold
Monro
BITTER SANCTUARY
I
She lives in the porter's room, the plush is nicotined
Clients have left their photos there to perish
She watches through green shutters those who press
To reach unconsciousness
She licks her varnished thin magenta lips,
She picks her foretooth with a finger nail,
She pokes her head out to greet new clients, or
To leave them (to what torture) waiting at the door.
n
Heat has locked the heavy earth,
Given strength to every sound.
He, where his life still holds him to the ground,
In anaesthesia, groaning for re>birth,
Leans at the door
From out the house there comes the dullest flutter,
A lackey, and thin giggling from behind that shutter.
III
His lost eyes lean to find and read the number.
Follows his knuckled rap, and hesitating curse.
He cannot wake himself, he may not slumber,
While on the long white wall across the road
Drives the thin outline of a dwindling hearse*
IV
Now the door opens wide.
He ' Is there room inside? '
She. ^ Are you past the bounds of pain? '
He ‘ May my body he in vain
Among the dreams I cannot keep* '
She ' Let him drink the cup of sleep '
102
V
Thin arms and ghostly hands, faint sky-blue eyes,
Long drooping lashes, lids like full-blown moons.
Clinging to any brink of floating skies
What hope is there? What fear? — Unless to wake and see
Lingering flesh, or cold eternity
O yet some face, half living, brings
Far gaze to him and croons
She ' You're white You are alone
Can you not approach my sphere? '
He ' Fm changing into stone '
She ‘ Would I were* Would I were*
Then the white attendants fill the cup
VI
In the morning through the world.
Watch the flunkeys bring the coffee.
Watch the shepherds on the downs.
Lords and ladies at their toilet.
Farmers, merchants, frothing towns
But look how he, unfortunate, now fumbles
Through unknown chambers, unheedful stumbles
Can he evade the overshadowing night?
Are there not somewhere chinks of braided light?
VII
How do they leave who once are in those rooms?
Some may be found, they say, deeply asleep
In ruined tombs
Some in white beds, with faces round them. Some
Wander the world, and never find a home.
Harold
Monro
103
Harold
Monro
THE GARDEN
He told me he had seen a ruined garden
Outside the town
^ Where? Where? ^
I asked him quickly
He said It lay toward the southern country,
He knew the road well he would take me there
Then he sat down and talked
About that garden
He was so grandly proud and sure of it,
I listened all the evening to his talk
And our glasses were emptied,
Talking of it
We filled them and filled them again,
Talking of it
He said that no one knew
The garden but himself,
Though hundreds passed it day by day,
Yet no one knew it but himself
I
The garden, it was long and wide
And filled with great unconscious peace.
All the old trees were tall and large,
And all the birds —
The birds, he said, were like a choir
Of lively boys.
Who never went to school,
But sang instead
He told me of the trailing flowers
Hung on the ruined walls.
The rivers and their waterfalls.
The hidden woods, the lawns, the bowers.
104
Harold
A4onro
III
To-morrow, to-morrow, we start our walk
To-morrow is here and he meets me surely
Out from the city we go and pursue
Mile after mile of the open road.
Come to a place of sudden trees,
Pass It across the fields, then on
By farmyards, through villages, over the downs.
Mile after mile we walk He is pleased
Our feet become heavy with dust, and we laugh.
And we talk all the while of our future delight
IV
He came upon the garden in the dusk.
He leaned against the wall
He pointed out its beauties m the gloom
We lay down weary in the shadow of elms,
And stared between their branches at the moon.
And talked about to-morrow and the garden.
I knew that everything he said was true,
For we were resting up against the wall
loy
Small cool plantations, palm and vine.
With fig-tree growing by their side.
And violet and maidenhair
And
II
we were late in conversation
Talking of that most wonderful garden^
And filled our glasses again and again
Talking about that beautiful garden.
Until he vowed in the middle of drink
To lead me to-morrow to see it myself
We closed our hands on the pact
He vanished away through the dark
Harold
Monro
V
Oh hard awakening from a dream
I thought I was in paradise
He cooked the coffee we had brought,
Then looked about him
We had not reached the wall, he found
It was a little farther on
We walked another mile or two,
And stood before the ruined gate
He was not satisfied at all
He said the entrance was not here
I hardly understood his talk.
And so I watched him move about
Indeed, it was the garden he had meant,
But not the one he had described
VI
Then suddenly from out his conversation
I saw It m the light of his own thought
A phantom Eden shining
Placid among his dreams
And he, with large eyes and with hands uplifted.
Cried Took, O look’" Indeed I saw the garden,
The ghostly palm and violet,
Fig, maidenhair, and fountain.
The rivers and their flowered lawns, the gleaming
Birds, and their song — I heard that clear I know
And silent, in amazement,
We stared
Then both sat down beneath the wall and rested
And in our conversation
Lived in the garden
106
VII
'Well come again next week/ he said at last
' We have no leisure to explore it now,
Besides we cannot climb this crumbling wall
Our gate is on the farther side, I know
We'd have to go right round, and even then
I am not sure it's open till the spring
I have affairs in town If you don't mind.
We will go back directly After all.
The garden cannot run away, or change
Next week I'll have more time, and, once inside,
Who knows Who knows? How very curious
too.
Hundreds of people pass it day by day
Along that high road over there, the cars —
Look at them' And the railway too' Well Well,
I'm glad that no one cares for Eden now
It would be spoilt so quickly We'll go back
By train, if you don't mind I've walked enough
Look, there's the station Eh? '
VIII
I did not see that man again
Until a year had gone or more
I had not found him anywhere.
And many times had gone to seek
The garden, but it was not there
One day along the country road
There was he coming all alone
He would have passed me with a stare
I held his arm, but he was cold,
And rudely asked me my affair
I said, there was a garden, I'd been told . . .
Harold
Monro
107
HaroU
Aionro
IX
Then suddenly came that rapture upon us,
We saw the garden again in our mutual thought*
Blue and yellow and green,
Shining by day or by night
^ Those are the trees, ^ he said, ‘ and there is the
gateway
To-day, I think, it is open And shall we not go
there^ '
Quickly we ran in our joy.
Quickly — then stopped, and stared
X
An angel with a flaming sword
Stood large, and beautiful, and clear*
He covered up his golden eyes.
And would not look as we came near
Birds wheeled about the flowery gate.
But we could never see inside.
Although (I often think) it stood
Slack on its hinges open wide
The angel dropped his hopeless sword.
And stood with his great pinions furled.
And wept into his hands but we
Feared, and turned back to our own world
io8
EDWIN MUIR
The Riders
109
Edwm
Mmr
THE RIDERS
At the dead centre of the boundless plain
Does our way end ? Our horses pace and pace
Like steeds forever labouring on a shield,
Keeping their solitary heraldic courses
Our horses move on such a ground, for them
Perhaps the progress is all ease and pleasure,
But It IS heavy work for us, the riders.
Whose hearts have flown so far ahead, they are lost
Long past all finding
While we sit staring at the same horizon
ne has such stagnant stretches, we are told,
I generation after generation
travel them, sad stationary journey,
hdt device, what meaning?
Yet these coursers
seen all and will see all Suppliantly
'ocks will melt, the sealed horizons fall
e their onset — and the places
learts have hid in will be viewed by strangers
g where we are, breathing the foreign air
e new realm they have inherited
e shall fall here on the plain
It may be
steeds would stumble, and the long road end,
gend says) if they should lack their riders
iut then a rider
ays easy to find Yet we fill a saddle
ist We sit where others have sat before us,
)thers will sit after us
It cannot be
These animals know their riders, mark the change
When one makes way for another It cannot be
They know this wintry wilderness from spring
For they have come from places dreadful past
All knowledge They have borne upon their saddles
Forms fiercer than the tiger, borne them calmly
As they bear us now
And so we do not hope
That their great coal-black glossy hides
Should keep a glimmer of the autumn light
We still remember, when our limbs were weightless
As red leaves on a tree, and our silvery breaths
Went on before us like new risen souls
Leading our empty bodies through the air
A princely dream Now all that golden country
Is rased as bare as Troy We cannot return,
And shall not see the kingdom of our heirs
These steeds are mortal, and we who fall so lightly.
Fall so heavily, are, it is said, immortal
Such knowledge should armour us against all change,
And this monotony Yet these worn saddles
Have powers to lull us to obliviousness
They were appointed for us, and the scent of the ancient
leather
Is strong as a spell So we must mourn or rejoice
For this oar seat, our station, our inheritance.
As if it were all
So we dream on
This IS our kingdom
Edwin
Muir
FRANK O'CONNOR
Three Old Brothers
1
Frank
O'Connor
THREE OLD BROTEIERS
While some goes dancing reels and some
Goes stuttering love in ditches
The three old brothers rise from bed
And moan, and pin their breeches,
And one says ' 1 can sleep no more,
rd liefer far go weeping
That honest men must he awake
Since brats can spoil their sleeping ^
And Blind Tom says that's eighty years
Hfl was ten years younger
rd take my stick and welt their rumps
And gall their gamest runner *
Then James the youngest cries ^ Praise God
We have outlived our passion*
And by their fire of roots all three
Praise God after a fashion
Says James ' I loved when I was young
A lass of one and twenty
That had the grace of all the queens
And broke men's hearts in plenty,
But now the girl's a gammy crone
With no soft sides or boosom.
And all the ones she kist abed
Where the fat maggot chews 'em.
And though she had no kiss for me
And though myself is older,
And though my thighs are cold to-night
Their thighs I think are colder '
And Blind Tom says ' I knew a man
A girl refused for lover
Worked in America forty years
And heaped copper on copper,
1 14
And came back all across the foam
Dressed in his silks and satins
And watched for her from dawn to dark
And from Compline to Matins,
And when she passed him in her shawl
He bust his sides with laughing,
And went back happy to the west.
And heeded no man^s scoffing,
And, Christ,' moans Tom, ' if I'd his luck
I'd not mind cold nor coughing *
Then Patcheen says ' My lot's a lot
All men on earth might envy
That saw the girl I could not get
Nurse an untimely baby '
And all three say ' Dear heart* Dear heart*
And James the youngest mutters
' Praise God we have outlived our griefs
And not fell foul like others,
Like Pans and the Grecian chiefs
And the three Ulster brothers*
FranJ{
O^Connor
RUTH FITTER
Portrait of a Gentleman
Digdog
II7
Kuth
Fitter
PORTRAIT OF A GENTLEMAN
{In business for himself in a small way, and not doing too well,
owing to trade depression and want of low qualities)
At the spraygun stands large heroic Ted
The screech of air, the thunder of the fan
Beat in huge billows of din about his head,
But can affect no feature of the Man,
Who thinks, This blasted stuff does go on thin —
But looks this is your cue, I think. Miss Muse,
Mount the compressed-air cylinder, and begin.
She from that vibrant rostrum frankly views
The face, the attitude, the matchless thews,
She from all little loves and passions free —
And opens thus O godlike Ted^ I see
On thy great breast the brazen harness glow.
On thy great shins behold the shining greaves.
Above thy countenance see the red plume blow,
The helm invisible, the sacred leaves
Captain of all lost causes, and the head
Of fallen enterprise, I see thee stand
Like Alexander summoning his dead
Warriors about him m the spectral land
Ah, should times mend, my Edward I thou would’st fall
To sad vulgarity a sudden prey —
I see the Residence, the Car, and all
Thy wife's long dreams come true in dread array*
But ere the moment passes, let me say.
Ted in hard times is beautiful, he seems
Like Agamemnon, like the bird of Jove,
Like the great golden navy of my dreams
Manned by dear virtue and unbent by love,
Trampling down briny trouble O that straight
We might beyond the raging of our fate
Cast anchor in the unimagined streams*
ii8
DIGDOG
Rooting in packingcase of dirty straw, hurling
lumps of it overboard moaning desire
moaning desire of vermin lovely rat
ineffable mouse attar of felicity
BUT there is nothing
nothing but dirt and darkness
but strawdirt chaffdust smellillusion alas
BRAVE CHIEN ANGLAIS
NOBLE RENARDEARTHER
DIGDOG
Alas I also
root in earth desiring
something for nothing digging down to peace
follow the mole and not the lark
bet with the bloke who knows
peace lies there whence from the dark
arise the hly and the rose
peace rams down in rivers of gold
and there great nuggets of sleep
wait for the seeker — ever been sold
sit on your tail and weep
for there is nothing but dirt and darkness
but strawdirt chaffdust smellillusion ALAS
LACHE ESPRIT ANGLAIS
POLTRON DE RENARDEARTHER
DIGDOG.
Ruth
Fitter
119
WILLIAM PLOMER
Before the Storm
Dragon-fly Love
The Death of a Snake
121
Wtlltam
Plomer
BEFORE THE STORM
Over dry dunes the driven sand before the storm
In cone-shaped funnels spins and rises
Like a spirit taking form,
Vain to call the boatman* The sound of his replies is
Dashed from human ears like a cup from desert lips
And rapidly the boat whirls out toward the rocking
ships,
What a tiny arm he waves, so swiftly the perspective
slips*
Tranquil here in winter dove-grey cranes
Stand in brackish pools and preen their plumage
And forget the summer rains.
But thunderclouds in torment now above the blue ridge
Are overspreading fanwise outwards from the grass-
green inland plains
A naked negro on a windblown horse
Prancing with elastic silence in the tempest-roar
Leaves a seaward dust-drift swerving from his course
And turns the trotting cattle inward from the shore
At last, like lust delayed or sorrow following remorse.
Released, the pent-up elemental outburst bleeds —
Sudden, with a pattering of heavy drops among the
straining reeds
122
DRAGON-FLY LOVE
Plated with light I float a thousand-eyed,
On rustling wings of veiny talc to fly.
To kiss in flight the image of my pride
That skims the deep reflection of the sky.
Where finny shoals in shadowy grace repose
Insects that perish with a tiny cry
Provide the speed with which my body goes
In scaly splendour quadruplaning by
Giddy with hope 1 seize my love at noon,
On tremulous wave of fiery air we run.
Long locked in love, across the red lagoon.
Blazing delirious while we whirl as one —
Diamonds melting underneath the moon,
Planets in union going round the sun
William
Plomer
Wtlham
Plomcr
THE DEATH OF A SNAKE
‘Dratfi and generations are both mysteries of nature, and somewhat
resemble each other Marcus Aurelius
Bruised by a heel he strove to die,
In frantic spirals bored the air,
Turned his pale belly upward to the sky
In coitus with death and here and there
Scored in the dust quick ideographs of pain —
These, that the wind removed, in memory remain
124
JOHN PUDNEY
The Thames Near Its Source
Crossing
John
Pudney
THE THAMES NEAR ITS SOURCE
Here at original source, in water meadows
here I have retreated, am pacing it to and fro,
testing a tendon, trying a muscle's ease,
watching the Thames, its quickening silver division,
knowing its flowing, paces, swift approaches,
and bridges, whirlpools, arches and hesitations,
how it will become tidal
Now it IS April, metal the skies, taut over, steep above
awakened orchards, cornlands
Branches, the bearing wood pointing all pointing growth,
bending m sapling strength
braced with the wind’s strict tension
And the roan mare, her fullness anxious now,
IS pacing careful, wary of her foaling
Now it IS plain, here avenues, ways begin,
April to June, river to tidal basin,
this summer’s crop and new stock on the farm
This IS where I, abashed to hesitate,
m eagerness must pause, and O my love,
certain that 1 must gather strength, with you
tidal become, the traffic way for ships
126
CROSSING
John
Pudncy
Starting at night
I watched a crane and tackle,
the burden of ship's muffled cargo loaded
the group ashore, the group upon the ship,
shouts and curt understanding
lip to hp
Waiting, apart,
I loaded another burden,
heard the impatient siren in my heart
created, knew the purpose of it harden
127
PETER QUENNELL
The Divers
Leviathan (i)
K
129
THE DIVERS
Peter
Q^nnell Ah, look,
How sucking their last sweetness from the air
These divers run upon the pale sea verge.
An evening air so smooth my hand could round
And grope a circle of the hollow sky
Without a harshness or impediment.
Look now,
How they run cowering and each unknots
A rag, a girdle twisted on his loins,
Stands naked, quivered in the cool of night
As boldest lovers will tire presently.
When dawn dries up a radiance on the limbs.
And lapse to common sleep.
To the deep tumult of habitual dreams.
Each sighing, with loosened limbs, as if regretfully.
Gives up his body to the foamless surge
Water combs out his body, and he sinks
Beyond all form and sound
Only the blood frets on.
Grown fearful, in a shallow dissonance.
Water strains on his hair and drums upon his flank,
Consumes his curious track
And straight or sinuous path
Dissolves as swift, impermanent as light.
Still his strange purpose drives him, like a beam.
Like the suspended shaft of cavern-piercing sun.
And, hardier still,
With wavering hands divides the massive gloom, —
130
A vast caress through which he penetrates,
Or obscure death withdrawing
Veil upon veil,
Discovering new darkness and profounder terror
' Consider you your loss.
For now what strength of foot or hand
Can take you by the narrow way you came
Through the clear darkness up again and up
Watch a procession of the living days.
Where dawn and evening melt so soft together
As wine in water, or milk shed m water,
Filming and clouding into even dullness '
^ Who weeps me now with pulse of noisy tears.
Who strikes the breast?
If I regret among the flowing weed.
My regret is
Not vocal, cannot pierce to hidden day.
Momentary, soon quenched, like a strangled flame ’
Peter
Qucnnell
Peter
Qt^nell
LEVIATHAN (i)
Leviathan drives the eyed prow of his face.
With the surge dumbly rippling round his lips,
Toward the Atlantid shore.
Not flat and golden like the Cherubim,
Or a face round and womanish like the Seraphim,
But thick and barbed — the broad, barbed cheeks of
Donne
Beneath he stretched his hands to the sea forests.
Obscure and thick, with the cool freshes under,
Lifts his surprised brows to the sky's milky light.
New come from the abyss.
While a faint radiance, webbed from the waves' sub-
stance.
Clung to his changing limbs and his coiled body,
Reddening, making them darker than the sea.
Or half translucent
And when the mouths of Atlantean brooks
Struck on his mouth with taste of sudden cold
And wound his shoulders like embracing hands.
He put out both thick palms and felt the shallows.
The salt had scurfed his body with white fire
And knotted the rough hair between his breasts,
And as he rose delicate Atlantis trembled,
Tilting upon the sea's plain like a leaf.
The passionless air hung heavy on Atlantis,
And the inclined spears of the flowering bushes
Smoothly dropped down their loosened, threaded petals.
Softening the pathways.
For tideless night had covered her, and sealed
All scent within the narrow throat of flowers,
And sound within the navel of the hills,
And stars in the confusion of the air.
Within her darkness and unconsciousness
She hid all beauty, and her silences
Sound's measurers and sequences,
And the black earth quickened
With oppression of blossom
Ah, thief that swims by night — Leviathan,
Rolled blindly in the wave's trough like a rotting thing.
Come to Atlantis' further edge by dark.
Poised over her quietness.
Measureless drunkard of the bitter sea,
Insatiate, like some slow stain
Creeping on pleasure's face.
Like sudden misery
So foul, so desolate,
That you are crept to seek new life,
Have crossed the water's plain.
Desiring and by stealth to gam
For rankness, foolishness and half-conceived beauty
Some perfect shape — an Atlantean body
Peter
Q^nnell
HERBERT READ
Tourists in a Sacred Place
Device
Logos
A Short Poem for Armistice Day
Mutations of the Phoenix (i) and (8)
d;
Herbert
K<^ad
TOURISTS IN A SACRED PLACE
A pallid rout stepping like phantoms
beneath the arching boughs,
have come with angel hands and wretched voices
to the valley and this choir of perished stones
Valid was my anguish — as though a turbulent dove
had scattered the leafy silence
Now in airless vistas, dim and blind my limbs will loiter
while the senses stray to vast defeats
A rocking bell
peals in a grey tower
The sound has broken down the strong defences
of age and innocence
Cecily come with your virginal tremors
Cecily still the bell
Your tresses are wet from the rushing river
a green weed clings like a vein on your breast
Cecily, listen, the clangour is over
now only the burden of bees m the clover
God and his angels have give you grace,
and stamped your mission on your naiad face.
156
DEVICE
0 that I might believe that time
Is but a measure thrown on things
That hold existence in a sphere
Intense alone, and always felt
In full reality' For then
1 could evade despondency
By magnifying to my frame
The ecstatic beat that night and day
Pulses within the milk white walls
Of mental sloth, eager to break
Into the radiant release
Of vision divine and precise
— Time that is a shrouded thought
Involving earth and life in doubt.
Herbert
Read
137
Herbert
B^ad
LOGOS
Suddenly he began to torture the flowers
began to twist red winter tulips
faced by the behemothian jaws
for which there is no inevitable IN and OUT
The carnage at the Theban gate
the startled blackcock's raucous cry
the Morse code of a boot and crutch
filled the space between river and sky
But stay* the light is cancelled there
the dark eyes cease
to stare at suns
and light breaks in behind the brain.
138
A SHORT POEM FOR ARMISTICE DAY
Gather or take fierce degree
trim the lamp set out for sea
here we are at the workman's entrance
clock in and shed your eminence
Notwithstanding, work it diverse ways
work it diverse days, multiplying four digestions
here we make artificial flowers
of paper, tin, and metal thread
One eye one leg one arm one lung
a syncopated sick heart beat
the record is not nearly worn
that weaves a background to our work
I have no power, therefore have patience
These flowers have no sweet scent
no lustre in the petal no increase
from fertilising flies, and bees
No seed they have no seed
their tendrils are of wire and grip
the buttonhole the lip
and never fade
And will not fade though life
and lustre go in genuine flowers
and men like flowers are cut
and withered on a stem
And will not fade a year or more
1 stuck one in a candlestick
and there it clings about the socket
I have no power, therefoie have patience
Herbert
Read
139
Herbert
ReaJ
MUTATIONS OF THE PHCENIX
(«)
Beauty, truth and rarity,
Grace in all simplicity,
Here enclosed in cinders he
We have rested our limbs
in some forsaken cover
where wide black horns of rock
Weigh on the subdued waters
the waters
menaced to quiet
Our limbs
settle into the crumbling sand
There will be our impress here
until the flowing tide
erases
all designs the fretful day leaves here
The blood burns in our limbs with an even flame.
The same sundering flame
has burnt the world and left these crumbling sands
The one flame
burns many phenomena.
The limbs
have their arcadian lethargy
holding the included flame
to a temporal submission
The flame
burns all
uses
the ducts and chambers of our tunnelled flesh
to focus flame
to its innate intensity.
140
Flame Herbert
IS a whirl of atoms Read
At one moment a whorl of what is seen —
a shell
A shell
convoluted through time —
endless and beginningless time.
( 8 )
This IS the holy phoenix time
The sun is sunken in a deep abyss
and her dying life transpires
Each bar and boss
of rallied cloud the fire receives
Till the ashen sky dissolves
The mind seeks ease
now that the moon has risen
and the world itself is full of ease.
The embers of the world
settle with a sigh, a bird's wing, a leaf
There is a faint glow of embers
in the ashen sky.
These stars
are your final ecstasy,
and the moon now risen
golden, easeful.
141
Herbert
Read
The hills creep in mistily —
the tide now a distant sigh —
like hounds outstretched
they guard the included peace —
the tide a muted ecstasy
The river carries in its slaty bed
an echo from the sea
But we leave
even the river is lost.
No sound now
No colour, all black a cave
In the cavern's mouth
the moon is hidden
Yet still the stars —
intense remnants of time.
O phoenix,
O merciful bird of fire,
Extinguish your white
hungry flames
142
MICHAEL ROBERTS
Poem 147
Black Funnel Spouting Black
On Reading Some Neglected Poets
H3
Michael
RpberU
POEM 147
Scatter grey ash to the darkness, break
The jar, the brittle urn, to the bleak
Inhuman north, and the dark wind
Crumble the trivial husk, the shell.
And claim, O firm substantial Earth,
The living pulse and the quick sap
From the green shoot and cunning skull
Take It, and take the unsullied lake.
The song, the unconquered hill, the alert
Touch, and the glance, and a man's strength —
Take it, you can but take it once —
Pride of young earth and living limb.
The gentian hour and the sun's light
Take Calcine the amorphous dust,
Destroy the inert substratum, break
Too late, the pattern dust attains.
Quicker than tardy death, the shining dark —
Beethoven deaf and Milton blind,
Melville forsaken of the valiant mind.
Beyond the inhuman pattern, men.
Broken, ephemeral, undismayed
144
BLACK FUNNEL SPOUTING BLACK
Leap out of the wild terror of the pines, O still-white hart*
Clatter your silver hooves to starbright glittering on
flint,
Be momentary magic, heart's delight,
Your motion is a music, link to link
And I have come upon this place
By the insistent thundering
Of melancholy streets, the wrack
Wrack of a broken mind
I have been long in coming, slow to move,
I have been shabbiness, but I kept
Quick, quick the clear eye
The heart's song and the sharp cry —
Have you not heard the salutation yet
Down by the docks, beneath a flickering jet,
Nor heard penumbral voices call
From wet blind alleys/ Past them all
Grind inefficient winches, cables, chains.
Rattling over capstans, stresses, strains.
Grate harsh and rusty music, and in shrieks
Fouling ripped air a clamouring dredger creaks.
Snarling, subsides; and one grim monolith,
Black funnel spouting black, white siren steam.
Moves by the sweat of men, swings out midstream.
Yells down the river, booms and by
Thin mist and oily waste, lantern-light.
Rides to the open sea and the waves' white
Following foam as one swung derrick groans and with
Unanswerable logic threads the sky.
L
Mtchacl
Kpherts
Aftchael
Kpberts
ON READING SOME NEGLECTED POETS
This IS a long road m a dubious mist,
Not with a groan nor any heard complaint
We march, uncomprehending, not expecting Time
To show us beacons
When we have struggled on a little farther
This madness will yield of itself.
There will not be any singing or sudden joy,
But a load will be set down
And maybe no one will ever come.
No other traveller passing that way,
Therefore the load we lifted will be left,
A milestone, insignificant
146
SIEGFRIED SASSOON
From The Heart's Journey
147
Siegfried
Sassoon
From THE HEART’S JOURNEY
(‘)
As I was walking in the gardens where
Spring touched the glooms with green, stole over me
A sense of wakening leaves that filled the air
With boding of Elysian days to be.
Cold was the music of the birds, and cold
The sunlight, shadowless with misty gold
It seemed I stood with Youth on the calm verge
Of some annunciation that should bring
With flocks of silver angels, ultimate Spring
Whence all that life had longed for might emerge
148
From THE HEART’S JOURNEY
(^)
You were glad to-night and now you've gone away
Flushed in the dark you put your dreams to bed,
But as you fall asleep I hear you say
Those tired sweet drowsy words we left unsaid
Sleep well for I can follow you to bless
And lull your distant beauty where you roam;
And with wild songs of hoarded loveliness
Recall you to these arms that were your home
Siegfried
Sassoon
149
Siegfried
Sassoon
From THE HEARTHS JOURNEY
(5)
' When Fm alone * — the words tripped off his tongue
As though to be alone were nothing strange
*When I was young,* he said, ‘when I was young . . .
I thought of age, and loneliness, and change
I thought how strange we grow when weVe alone.
And how unlike the selves that meet, and talk,
And blow the candles out, and say good-night
Alone, , , , The word is life endured and known.
It IS the stillness where our spirits walk
And all but inmost faith is overthrown
IJO
GEOFFREY SCOTT
What was Solomon's Mind?
Not I
The Golden Spider in the Mind
To W H. Davies
The Weathercock on the Moor
WHAT WAS SOLOMON’S MIND?
Geoffrey
Scott
What was SoIomon^s mind?
If he was wise in truth,
'Twas something hard to find
And delicate a mouse
Tingling, and small, and smooth.
Hid in vast haunted house.
By smallness quite beset —
Stillest when most alive —
Shrinking to smaller yet
And livelier, until,
Gladly diminutive,
Still smoother, and more still,
He centres to an Eye,
A clean expectancy,
That, from the narrow black
Safe velvet of his crack,
Quivering, quiet, dumb.
Drinks up the lighted room
NOT I
Geoffrey
Scott
You come to where I dwelt,
Yes, in this house was I,
Green leaves hung on the air without,
I from these window-slits looked out
For you to spy,
And there were words for you that knelt
Within this door.
Aye, words, and more
So late you come O near
And late you come And why?
Did you not hear the wind about,
And a crack of branches dry?
And see the dusty door, and fear
As you came by?
Shut door, and tapping boughs . . .
It's empty, Fm not here,
I know not what it is looks out
And watches from my eye
You're walking in a voiceless house
That IS not I
Geoffrey
Scott
THE GOLDEN SPIDER IN THE MIND
Here's a bent tree
Hated and loved it, have I, years in turn,
Cool fan-flake roof and dappled root in fern,
What do they say for me?
This only here
I stood alone, once, in a vanished year,
Imagining
A most vain thing
Mark Folly well
But her divine disguising
Who may tell?
What golden spider in the mind, devising
How he should fling his unseen filmy rope.
Chanced here to shed
On trembling beech-twig tender overhead
His skein of airy hope?
On that day I
Lay leafy-lost, sun-sped.
Till greenlight fled
And the sky whispered, and a web was spun
Never to be undone
Bent tree,
O hatred part of me.
By what an iron cord you bind me now
Fast to your bitter bough *
TO W, H DAVIES
Geoffrey
Scott
I would my sight were formed to stare
In ecstasy on cows and trees,
To drink them in, and taste with care
Their sweet particularities,
And I would count them, but I go
Lost in a landscape of the mind,
A country where the lights are low
And where the ways are hard to find.
Geoffrey
Scott
THE WEATHERCOCK ON THE MOOR
If I dressed up in a feather
And cloak of blue and blue.
And you gold altogether
Like corn the wind runs through;
Not then would Earth's dull tether
Our airy bodies hold.
The sky would snatch at my feather
The sun at your suit of gold,
The crazy cock of the weather
That points to north and south
Would see us flying together
And crow from his rusty mouth;
But you gave your suit to a beggar^
My cloak is one and black,
And wind in corn or heather
Ran once, and never back
iy6
EDITH SITWELL
Colonel Fantock
When Sir Beelzebub
En Famille
^51
Edith
Sitwell
COLONEL FANTOCK
To Osbert and Sacheverell
Thus spoke the lady underneath the trees
I was a member of a family
Whose legend was of hunting — (all the rare
And unattainable brightness of the air) —
A race whose fabled skill in falconry
Was used on the small song-birds and a winged
And blinded Destiny 1 think that only
Winged ones know the highest eyrie is so lonely
There in a land, austere and elegant,
The castle seemed an arabesque in music,
We moved in an hallucination born
Of silence, which like music gave us lotus
To eat, perfuming lips and our long eyelids
As we trailed over the sad summer grass,
Or sat beneath a smooth and mournful tree
And Time passed, suavely, imperceptibly
But Dagobert and Peregrine and 1
Were children then, we walked like shy gazelles
Among the music of the thin flower-bells
And life still held some promise, — never ask
Of what, — but life seemed less a stranger, then.
Than ever after in this cold existence
I always was a little outside life, —
And so the things we touch could comfort me,
I loved the shy dreams we could hear and see —
For I was like one dead, like a small ghost,
A little cold air wandering and lost
All day within the straw-roofed arabesque
Of the towered castle and the sleepy gardens wandered
i;8
Edith
Sitwell
When night came, sounding like the growth of trees,
My great-grandmother bent to say good-night.
And the enchanted moonlight seemed transformed
Into the silvery tinkling of an old
And gentle music-box that played a tune
Of Circean enchantments and far seas.
Her voice was lulling like the splash of these
When she had given me her good-night kiss,
There, in her lengthened shadow, 1 saw this
Old military ghost with mayfly whiskers, —
Poor harmless creature, blown by the cold wind.
Boasting of unseen unreal victories
To a harsh unbelieving world unkind, —
For all the battles that this warrior fought
Were with cold poverty and helpless age —
His spoils were shelters from the winter's rage
And so for ever through his braggart voice.
Through all that martial trumpet's sound, his soul
Wept with a little sound so pitiful.
Knowing that he is outside life for ever
With no one that will warm or comfort him
He IS not even dead, but Death's buffoon
On a bare stage, a shrunken pantaloon
His military banner never fell.
Nor his account of victories, the stories
Of old apocryphal misfortunes, glories
Which comforted his heart in later life
When he was the Napoleon of the schoolroom
And all the victories he gained were over
Little boys who would not learn to spell
We; those delicate paladins the waves
Told us fantastic legends that we pondered
And the soft leaves were breasted like a dove.
Crooning old mournful tales of untrue love
Edith All day within the sweet and ancient gardens
Sitwell He had my childish self for audience —
Whose body flat and strange, whose pale straight hair
Made me appear as though I had been drowned —
(We all have the remote air of a legend) —
And Dagobert my brother whose large strength,
Great body and grave beauty still reflect
The Angevin dead kings from whom we spring,
And sweet as the young tender winds that stir
In thickets when the earliest flower-bells sing
Upon the boughs, was his just character.
And Peregrine the youngest with a naive
Shy grace like a faun's, whose slant eyes seemed
The warm green light beneath eternal boughs
His hair was like the fronds of feathers, life
In him was changing ever, springing fresh
As the dark songs of birds the furry warmth
And purring sound of fires was in his voice
Which never failed to warm and comfort me
And there were haunted summers in Troy Park
When all the stillness budded into leaves.
We listened, like Ophelia drowned in blond
And fluid hair, beneath stag-antlered trees.
Then, in the ancient park the country-pleasant
Shadows fell as brown as any pheasant.
And Colonel Fantock seemed like one of these.
Sometimes for comfort in the castle kitchen
He drowsed, where with a sweet and velvet hp
The snapdragons within the fire
Of their red summer never tire
And Colonel Fantock liked our company;
For us he wandered over each old he.
Changing the flowering hawthorn, full of bees,
Into the silver helm of Hercules,
i6o
For us defended Troy from the top stair
Outside the nursery, when the calm full moon
Was like the sound within the growth of trees
But then came one cruel day in deepest June,
When pink flowers seemed a sweet Mozartian tune.
And Colonel Fantock pondered o'er a book
A gay voice like a honeysuckle nook, —
So sweet, — said, ^ It is Colonel Fantock's age
Which makes him babble ' Blown by winter's rage
The poor old man then knew his creeping fate.
The darkening shadow that would take his sight
And hearing, and he thought of his saved pence
Which scarce would rent a grave that youthful voice
Was a dark bell which ever clanged ' Too late ' —
A creeping shadow that would steal from him
Even the little boys who would not spell, —
His only prisoners On that June day
Cold Death had taken his first citadel
M
i6i
Edith
Sitwell
WHEN SIR BEELZEBUB
Edith
Sitwell
WHEN
Sir
Beelzebub called for bis syllabub in the hotel in Hell
Where Proserpine first fell,
Blue as the gendarmerie were the waves of the sea,
(Rocking and shocking the bar-maid )
Nobody comes to give him his rum but the
Rim of the sky hippopotamus-glum
Enhances the chances to bless with a benison
Alfred Lord Tennyson crossing the bar laid
With cold vegetation from pale deputations
Of temperance workers (all signed In Mernoriam)
Hoping with glory to trip up the Laureate^s feet,
(Moving m classical metres) . . .
Like Balaclava, the lava came down from the
Roof, and the sea’s blue wooden gendarmerie
Took them m charge while Beelzebub roared for his rum
. . . None of them come ^
162
EN FAMILLE
In early spring-time, after their tea.
Through the young fields of the springing Bohea,
Jemima, Jocasta, Dinah, and Deb
Walked with their father Sir Joshua Jebb —
An admiral red, whose only notion,
(A butterfly poised on a pigtailed ocean)
Is of the peruked sea whose swell
Breaks on the flowerless rocks of Hell
Under the thin trees. Deb and Dinah,
Jemma, Jocasta, walked, and finer
Their black hair seemed (flat-sleek to see)
Than the young leaves of the springing Bohea,
Their cheeks were like nutmeg-flowers when swells
The rain into foolish silver bells
They said, ' If the door you would only slam.
Of if. Papa, you would once say Damn '' —
Instead of merely roaring '' Avast
Or boldly invoking the nautical Blast —
We should now stand in the street of Hell
Watching siesta shutters that fell
With a noise like amber softly sliding.
Our moon-like glances through these gliding
Would see at her table preened and set
Myrrhina sitting at her toilette
With eyelids closed as soft as the breeze
That flows from gold flowers on the incense-trees/
The Admiral said, ' You could never call —
I assure you it would not do at all*
She gets down from the table without saying Please, **
Forgets her prayers and to cross her T^s,
In short, her scandalous reputation
Has shocked the whole of the Hellish nation;
163
Edith
Sitwell
Edith
Sitwell
And every turbaned Chinoiserie,
With whom we should sip our black Bohea,
Would stretch out her simian fingers thin
To scratch you, my dears, like a mandoline.
For Hell IS just as properly proper
As Greenwich, or as Bath, or Joppa*
164
OSBERT SITWELL
Mrs Kimber
i6j
Osbcrt
Sitwell
MRS KIMBER
I Invocation to Mrs Kimber
All hail,
Ever borne back to mind
On any salt and stinging wind
That grows a rind
Of tar*
All hail,
Blithe spirit of the uncomplaining North
(For such was Mrs Kimber,
Dear, dwindling Mrs Kimber,
With her quick, crenellated smile
And simple speech
That yet could never fail
In metaphor and image)
Yes, all hail, all hail*
See, she approaches,
There's her tartan shawl*
We must find a suitable accompaniment
For her appearance,
Let, then, no dancing, light-foot waves
Of southern seas, however azure-lined
And tipped with swansdown,
Their pale sands
Paven with pavonine or roseate shells
And parian limbs of gods and goddesses.
With cups of Bacchus and with ears of fawns.
Supply their trivial music for her
But, instead, sound forth.
Loud cacophonous breakers of the North,
Fringed with grey wings of sea-gulls.
Lined with black, slimy sea weed
And the bones of men
i66
You, too, you mournful bells
Toll out from upright steeples
Of English sea-side towns,
Sound twin tongues,
St Peter and St Paul,
Toll out, St Thomas and St Saviour,
St Ethelburga and St John,
all,
all I
II. Mrs Kimber
When the sea was smooth
— Hilly, that IS, not mountainous —
Tolling bells could not depress her.
At night asleep.
And busy, very busy, all the day,
Bustling and dusting.
She was blithe and gay,
Singing like a kittiwake about her work
By the first light.
So greenly submarine.
That filtered in at frosty windows
— And this held equally at bay
The spectres of the past and future.
Spectres of the deep
She lived, or seemed to live.
In an old house, so flashing white
It might be carved from salt.
That tilted down a hill.
Ribbed, hernng-bone-like, with red tiles
And here she tended
Her four stout sailor sons
And darned and mended
(Darned and mended.)
167
Oshert
Sitwell
Osbert Often away,
Sitwell One upon each of the four seas
She kept things ship-shape for them
— Even when at home
Life was conducted
To the sound of bells,
The very rhythm of the sea.
While their rolling gait
Brought the victorious rush of waters
Into the timid, solid streets of houses
Thus she was ever busy
On her sons' behalf.
Scrubbing floors,
Polishing glass-cases, kettles,
Washing doors.
Cutting spikes ofF urchins.
Whitewashing the yard
— Where pointed jawbones of a whale or two
Supplied triumphal arches for their valour.
And wherein.
Caught by her youngest.
Flopped and flapped a seal
(With the same, sudden smile as Mrs
Kimber's)
' Like a cat for fish, that sea-calf '
She would remark,
Applauding kindred zeal
III Properties and Prospects
This was her life, one thought,
(Dear Mrs Kimber, whose quick, castellated smile
Still haunts me),
A busy life in rooms low- roofed.
Crowded with ostrich-eggs, large, spiky shells,
168
And coloured veiws of foreign parts
Prisoned in glass paper-weights.
And little ships in bottles
Then there were ornaments of jet,
And, hanging on the wall,
The Queen, on her two jubilees,
(Head resting on imperial hand)
Some brittle bunches of white sea-weed,
By which to skill the weather.
And, from each window.
An abruptly falling street
Edged with wide seas.
While, as the prospect from the windows of her soul,
There stretched an acrid, waterproof perspective
Of fishing nets and bibles.
Red sails, red-herrings, hind tarpaulin faces.
All washed by a sea of soap-suds,
With Sunday as a weekly, workless culmination,
A formal day of dreams and how-d'you-dos.
Of boots like irons, violets in a bonnet,
And, just visible beyond this barrier.
Gigantic anti-chmax of the usual Monday,
Dim workaday Monday
Set in a golden cloud of whirling dust.
IV Day Dreams
But often
(When the seas were smooth)
Mrs Kimber was not there at all.
Floated out of her surroundings
Into an ideal world,
A scaly universe, with Aberdeen,
Distant and unattainable metropolis
Of fishing nets and shawls.
As its most fishy centre
Oshert
Sitwell
169
Osbert
Sitwell
She could almost hear them, almost smell them,
Flopping alive upon the granite quays
Almost see them, wriggling great mountains
Of speckled gold and mottled silver, mostly
silver.
Emptied from the trawlers.
To be appraised by expert eyes.
And pinched by expert fingers
Gleaming, writhing hills of herring, cod and codling.
Ling, sprat, in their season, sole, smelt and whiting.
Plaice, lait, dab, trout and salmon
Gurnet, pennock, wufF and billet,
Thornback, Monk Fish (or Sea Devil)
Eels, conger eels and sand eels,
Cuttlefish, Black Jack and Old Fishwife
* Fish,' she would say, ' is in my very bones '
And so it was she knew the names of them,
So very many fishes.
And their story.
Their times and seasons.
When to catch 'em, when to cook 'em
(Almost, one felt, she comprehended their last
wishes)
How the moon affected mackerel
And the stars, a dory
V. Rough Weather
But, when the sea was rough.
When the deep sound of bells
Was smothered in the gale
That cracked its whips
170
At every corner of the town,
When the thunder of the breakers
Pounded below, at cliffs that crumble,
Beneath the tearing cries of sea-gulls,
At once she'd quite her visionary world.
Then,
Remembering her husband.
Her brain would turn all skimble-skamble,
And her eyes, flowers of the Northern waters,
Would strain towards the horizon,
Where the mountains shifted.
Watching, watching, the seas whereon there sailed her
sons,
Those northern seas,
Lined with black, slimy sea-weed
And the bones
Of men
Toll from tall steeple,
Mournful bein
But let
Your voice be caught, caught up and smothered in
the wind,
So that it reach her not
Not yet.
Not yet
VI Colophon
See how this stinging wind
Precipitates her in the mind,
A regular shape in crystal
Formed by the natural processes of chemistry*
See, there she sits now.
Beneath the ribboned portrait of her Queen*
Oshert
Sitwell
171
Oshert Come, let us pledge her*
Sttwcll We need fill
No beaker with the blushful Hippocrene,
But, while proud kettles puff their ostrich-plumes
And lids uprise upon a chanting gale,
From Indian herbs then sepia juice distil
And pledge her, crying again
All hail. All haill
172
SACHEVERELL SITWELL
The River God
Wind as Husbandman
First Variation on a Theme by George Peek
175
Sacheverell
Sitwell
THE RIVER GOD
Leap out, chill water, over reeds and brakes.
Flash bright your sword
Out of my hand that never shakes,
Your voice rings louder than my whispered word.
For my song is but a murmur down the wind and water
No louder than the leaves that make my chequered shade,
Cooling the bank on which Fm laid
My urn I move not, lest the blade may break.
Its round lip no more dropping water.
When this, my river, at its source will die
And sinking through the sand will bare each daughter.
Born of this glassy world, though now they he
On the green bank high above that falling flood,
And wait like snow for sun or rain to move them.
I could not help them, were my stream to stop,
Until it springs again from out my urn,
But now it floods the pool and wells up high,
Sparkling like the sun's gold eye,
While from this plenitude it flows away
And hides those nymphs again below its glass
Heaped on the hills, till with the sun they flow,
Safe runs the river now made sure with snow,
Snow, as those nymphs cool, as white my locks,
Which, while they also fall, tell time like clocks
174
WIND AS HUSBANDMAN
Wind IS husbandman, the sun’s heat carrying,
He fills fruit with ripeness and he loads the vines,
More gentle than sunlight, bringing rain to cool them,
For like our tender eyes that cannot look upon the sun.
Fruit and harvest die without the shade, their nurse —
Wind most surely is the sun’s ally.
Who works with him, running where his word commands,
Who fetches him his goatskins filled with rain
At his want to loose their necks and let the rain outpour.
While upon his back each slackening skin he carries
And empties them, now here, now there, with certain
hand
At the cockcrow sound of trumpets,
Feather-crested, when the sun first shows,
Comes wind, hot-footed, to make ready the arena
And drives forth the clouds who graze so low upon the
plain.
Like a flock the giants among them, while the little
clouds
Rest, till he moves them with their sails close-set
Like ships that he the night through for the wind to
blow.
Their canvas ready and the sailors on the look-out
Though the same stars burn there and are answered in
the water,
Each fire-heart blazing low, and never lifted on a wave,
Like fruit to blow there.
Till a wave-crest, for the leaves, now hides it.
Foam shows, and the waves are leaping
Each time they scatter hiding down this image
While, in the sky, the stars burn with fainter fire
It IS wind who into morning air, silent, creeps
And breathes upon its windows with thin mist to hush the
stars,
Sacheverell
Sitwell
Sactieverell Blowing out those candles, for the young day is born,
Sitwell And as light burns fiercer, grows the wind more strong
Filling out their sails now so the clouds can start,
And they tack straight down the heavens with the sea-
wind helping
But he plays with other measures on the high hills
walking
For against them, as horizon, he will heap the clouds
Piling white hill on hill to mock their snow,
And the sun, when he comes climbing, for a moment
shows.
First his fiery crest, and then his plumes too bright to
look at
Next, to teach the mountains of his fearful might,
The sun, with hot shadow of his flame, attacks the clouds,
But his echo is a fiercer bolt than any lightning.
And, while he looks at them, the clouds are crumbled,
Drifting in split fragments from the mountain mass
They scatter on the wind like little drifts of snow.
And the sun in his zenith burns without a shade
Wind, in these summer days, works for the reaper.
Both of them stopping in the golden corn
And while the reaper bows down, still with his labour.
Wind plays about his ears and shakes the grain
In those fields more burnished where the bee works.
There will wind shake and cause to tremble
That glittering harvest, till the bee with his garnering
Leaves the shaking golden bell, and spreads his wings
176
FIRST VARIATION ON A THEME BY GEORGE
PEELE
God, in the whizzing of a pleasant wind,
Shall march upon the tops of mulberry trees
George Peele
I was lying in the dappled shade,
the lute hung lifeless m my lap,
when God stepped out of a moving cloud
to tread the tops of mulberry trees
He hushed the trumpets, furled His flags
and made His angels wave their wings,
thus was blown the pleasant wind
that wafted Him within my sight
And when I saw Him through the leaves,
1 knew He trod His winepress there,
the nectar sliding from the mountains
did not please Him like those berries
I touched my strings, and God looked down;
He smiled on me, and gave me wings,
but e'en His plumes had not the glow
the fire of fruit lit in the air.
All the while He kept His pace
And marched on in the whizzing wind.
I ran behind with feathered feet
and followed Him as best I could.
Had I gone quite far enough,
we should have reached to Black-man's land,
where ebon faces show out clear
against the brooks and crystal waves
Sacheverell
Sitwell
N
177
Sacheverell
Sttwell
But dying daylight told the hour
and warned me I had best turn back
1 wept at parting, then I smiled,
and knew the purpose of these plumes
For with their help I bridged the air;
I perched upon the silent sill,
and from this height my lute will sound,
and I shall catch the whispered call
178
STEPHEN SPENDER
The Express
After they have Tired
He will watch the Hawk
179
Stephen
Spender
THE EXPRESS
After the first powerful plain manifesto
The black statement of pistons, without more fuss
But gliding like a queen, she leaves the station
Without bowing and with restrained unconcern
She passes the houses which humbly crowd outside,
The gasworks and at last the heavy page
Of death, printed by gravestones in the cemetery
Beyond the town there lies the open country
Where, gathering speed, she acquires mystery,
The luminous self-possession of ships on ocean.
It IS now she begins to sing — at first quite low
Then loud, and at last with a jazzy madness —
The song of her whistle screaming at curves.
Of deafening tunnels, brakes, innumerable bolts
And always light, aerial, underneath
Goes the elate metre of her wheels
Steaming through metal landscape on her lines
She plunges new eras of wild happiness
Where speed throws up strange shapes, broad curves
And parallels clean like the steel of guns
At last, further than Edinburgh or Rome,
Beyond the crest of the world, she reaches night
Where only a low streamline brightness
Of phosphorus on the tossing hills is white
Ah, like a comet through flame she moves entranced
Wrapt in her music no bird song, no, nor bough
Breaking with honey buds, shall ever equal
i8o
AFTER THEY HAVE TIRED
Stephen
After they have tired of the brilliance of cities
And of striving for office where at last they may languish
Hung round with easy chains until
Death and Jerusalem glorify also the crossing-sweeper
Then those streets the rich built and their easy love
Fade like old cloths, and it is death stalks through life
Grinning white through all faces
Clean and equal like the shine from snow
In this time when grief pours freezing over us,
When the hard light of pain gleams at every street-corner.
When those who were pillars of that day's gold roof
Shrink in their clothes, surely from hunger
We may strike fire, like fire from flint?
And our strength is now the strength of our bones
Clean and equal like the shine from snow
And the strength of famine and of our enforced idleness.
And it is the strength of our love for each other
Readers of this strange language.
We have come at last to a country
Where light equal, like the shine from snow, strikes
all faces.
Here you may wonder
How it was that works, money, interest, building, could
ever hide
The palpable and obvious love of man for man.
Oh comrades, let not those who follow after
— The beautiful generation that shall spring from our
sides —
Let not them wonder how after the failure of banks
The failure of cathedrals and the declared insanity of our
rulers.
i8i
Stephen We lacked the Spring-like resources of the tiger
Spender Or of plants who strike out new roots to gushing waters.
But through torn-down portions of old fabric let their
eyes
Watch the admiring dawn explode like a shell
Around us, dazing us with its light like snow
182
HE WILL WATCH THE HAWK
Stephen
Spender
He will watch the hawk with an indifferent eye
Or pitifully,
Nor on those eagles that so feared him, now
Will strain his brow.
Weapons men use, stone, sling and strong-thewed bow
He will not know
This aristocrat, superb of all instinct.
With death close linked
Had paced the enormous cloud, almost had won
War on the sun.
Till now, like Icarus mid-ocean-drowned,
Hands, wings, are found
RANDALL SWINGLER
In Death the Eyes are Still
The Swans
i8;
Randall
Swmglcr
IN DEATH THE EYES ARE STILL
In death the eyes are still
And the folds about the eyes
Settle, and the round ears mi
With silence, and the mouth replies
No more, accepting all.
These ghosts who walk, have died
Long since, of life's negation.
Being satisfied
To lapse in their imperfect station
Turning their face to the wall.
We climb the air, to find
An exit from the plaster
Of time if once the mind's
Propeller slacken, the hollow past
Receives us and we fall
THE SWANS
Only to those who have climbed the dusky hill
To watch the simple contortions of the land
At evening, a beautiful and calm apparel
For our thought, and the mature light
Fallen slanting among trees, shaping them
Palpably, the thought itself, the richness
And the consistence of sensitive life,
Only then at last in the moment ordained
By cast of beauty, the swans come, silverly skeined
Above the water's deepened animation,
Their hard unplaceable distant susurrus of wings
Mbcing most gently with the sun-sifted birches'
Light behaviour and the childish wind's agility.
Only then caught in the shock of wonder
Folding again with easy rings, the surface
Of contention shows an equal image.
Stealing white in the enclosing water's incredible silk
At the grey conclusion of Eight
The locked wings the calmed heart.
Randall
SwtngUr
187
PAMELA TRAVERS
The Poet
The Dark Heart
Joseph in Bethlehem
Prayer in a Field
189
Pamela
Travers
THE POET
Mine IS a still small cry
a pipe with one stop,
one tune or two maybe
run in my song
backwards and forwards
crying and calling
like a lost girl
in a wood of fauns
There is no woman
can touch on abundance
in the teeming world
of moons and suns
save in the threaded womb
that with a silver
net draws down thought
to the hidden children
Our lovers must bring us
news of the mountains,
redden with their songs
our quiet mouths
They will not remember
what thoughts, what horizons
they drew down to themselves
out of our silence.
190
THE DARK HEART
The equinoxes pass
With banners and are gone
She sits among the seasons
Stiller than stone.
Immutable and bowed
Beneath the wheeling s
Lord, how can you get in
That dark heart of hers
That has for its business
The root and the seed?
From these she will not stir
Nor lift her head
For Michael and his troop,
Nor you — But oh, disguise*
And when black boughs break out
In stars before her eyes
Go in with them, go in
With summer to her thought,
Fly to her ear upon
The cuckoo's double note.
Be the wild sloe, no fruit
Ripened but found her,
Hid in the brown creek water
You may surround her.
Press through the heifer's flank
Where her cheek bends.
Run in the jets of milk
Down through her hands;
phe
Pamela
Travers
191
Pamela
Travers
And when in evening fields
By the wheat's green rim,
Her lover goes to her breast,
Lord, go thou in with him*
JOSEPH IN BETHLEHEM
My house is full of kings
Creaking with gold,
Their crowns are piled on my pillow
My quilt IS thick with roses
If I were to draw near
I could not see her
Save through a wilderness
Of stiJfF bright cloaks
Oh, she was red and white
Under my kiss,
And passionate as midsummer
The heart under her mantle
Until she was betrayed
By heavenly largesse
And I made cuckold
By a blazing star
We were wandering folk
That would be turning
Stools and querns in the villages
And going on to the hills
With common things
Sweetening our talk —
And no thought of this
Intolerable honour,
Or down by Galilee
Planing the oars
For deep sea, or for shallow sea —
Oh, there was no calling
Her wildness under a roof
Until this bitter
Child took her womb and filled
My house with kings
Pamela
Travers
o
^93
Pamela
Travers
Between the thronging cloaks
I see her now
Bowed down beneath the holy light
Weeping, and no longer wild,
Those ample doves, her breasts,
Suckling a stranger,
Her tears dropping gently
Down to the hay.
194
PRAYER IN A FIELD
Pamela
Traven
Saint Anthony, my little cow
with the sedate and comely air,
you remember? Her horns were round
and bent like thorn boughs, and there were
dun shadows patched upon her grey,
that when she moved
along the bushy dappled ways
you could not tell her from the wood.
She has gone wild upon the hills,
dancing with unquiet steps as though
her teats were full of faery milk,
beating her hooves upon the stone,
her cool creamy udder swinging
the tops of the grass
as the moon rising out of the glen
swings the sycamores going past
She would wait by the hawthorn hedge
when Michael pulled me down into
the speckled barley field and bent
me backwards till the barley grew
over us in a soft green night,
with flowers of charlock
bobbing between our mouths and shining
up in the green like yellow stars.
And gently with her tongue divide
the delicate blossom from the leaf
until the barley field grew quiet
Then she would come and brush my cheek
with sweet may-blossom breath, and stand
still as the hills
that 1 might reach up with my hand
and cool my love's mouth with her milk.
o*
Pamela
Travers
Have you no girl, Saint Anthony,
to bend back into Heaven's lawn
and kiss until your mouth is dry
for a bowl of milk or spring water?
If you'd been under a girl's cloak,
Saint Anthony, now
you'd know the thirst in Michael's throat
and bring me home my little cow.
196
SYLVIA TOWNSEND WARNER
Song from The Bride of Smithfield
The Lenten Offering
197
SONG FROM THE BRIDE OF SMITHFIELD
Sylvia
Townsend
Warner
A thousand guileless sheep have bled,
A thousand bullocks knelt in fear,
To daub my Henry's cheek with red
And round the curl above his ear
And wounded calves hung up to drip
Have in slow sweats distilled for him
The dew that polishes his lip,
The inward balm that oils each limb.
In vain I spread my maiden arts,
In vain for Henry's love I pine
He is too skilled in bleeding hearts
To turn this way and pity mine
198
THE LENTEN OFFERING
Christ, Kerens a thorn
More poison-fanged than any that you knew
On the north side of our churchyard it grew,
Where he the suicides and babes chance-born
Christ, here are nails,
Once driven in, will never lose their hold
Forged at Krupp's, Creusot's, Vickers', and tipped with
gold
Pen-nibs that signed the Treaty of Versailles
Christ, here's a sharp
Spear, can wound deeper than all other spears
In baths of human blood and human tears
Tempered, and whetted on the human heart
Sylvia
Townsend
Warner
199
HUMBERT WOLFE
Prolegomena to any Future Satire
From News of the Devil
201
Humbert
Wolfe
PROLEGOMENA TO ANY FUTURE SATIRE
^ Milton • thou shouldst be living at this hour/
but since your voice is still, and no one knows
whether life wears an artificial flower,
or the deep velvet of a breathing rose,
since no one cares whether the sudden shower,
that sweeps the world, is from a garden-hose,
or is the ancient, unexhausted power
of rain that cleans, and sanctifies, and goes,
let me, as when by innocent sacrilege
in some carved temple, whose hushed worshippers
seek truth, through Buddha's lips a wandered midge
shrills and is quiet, so let me rehearse
as shrill and brief, but no less dedicate,
' They also serve, who only stand and hate '
202
From NEWS OF THE DEVIL
And now the devil's voice rose up and out,
like the last trumpet in an army's rout
* Dust are the stars, and mankind's deepest lust
only a lazy wind that stirs the dust,
and dies again, leaving the dust as level
whether it blew from God or from the devil
And neither God nor devil knows or cares
how dust may regulate its grey affairs,
since what men call the devil, and their sense
of God, IS mankind's last impertinence
This is self-knowledge, Arthur Say you sinned.
It IS the same as goodness m the end
What shall it matter if a grain of dust
fulfils its mission or its interest,
since all its interest or mission is,
starting with nameless dust, to end with this?
And say one gram of dust dominion gains
over a thousand, no a myriad grains.
It IS no more than if a raindrop tried
shoreward to drag the whole Atlantic tide
It does not change the other grains, or even
change its own doom, not made in Hell or Heaven,
but in the long decay of the first thought
that slowly crumbles backward into naught
Grain rubs on grain, and as they work and fester,
contemptuous Time, unconscious, pricks the blister,
God IS not mocked, Paul Arthur, by the dust,
and you will mingle quiet with the rest,
as indistinguishable and as small
as though you had not lived or died at all
Be not afraid, all that you were, and are,
IS but the putrefaction of a star,
and nothing that you could have done, or can,
could change the grovelling destiny of man '
Humbert
Wolfi
203
W. B YEATS
Byzantium
Death
20J
W.B
Yeats
BYZANTIUM
The unpurged images of day recede;
The Emperor's drunken soldiery are a-bed,
Night's resonance recedes, night-walkers song
After great cathedral gong,
A starlight or a moonlit dome distains
All that man is.
All mere complexities.
The fury and the mire of human veins
Before me floats an image, man or shade,
Shade more than man, more image than a shade;
For Hades' bobbin bound in mummy cloth
May unwind the winding path,
A mouth that has no moisture and no breath
Breathless mouths may summon,
I hail the Superhuman,
I call it Death-in-life and Life-in-death
Miracle, bird or golden handy-work
More miracle than bird or handy-work
Planted on the star-lit golden bough,
Can like the cocks of Hades crow,
Or, by the moon embittered, scorn aloud.
In glory of changeless metal.
Common bird or petal
And all complexities of mire or blood.
At midnight on the Emperor's pavement flit
Flames that no faggot feeds, nor steel has lit.
Nor storm disturbs, flames begotten of flame.
Where blood begotten spirits come
And all complexities of fury leave,
Dying into a dance.
An agony of trance.
An agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve
206
A straddle on the dolphin^s mire and blood
Spirit after spirit^ the smithies break the floods
The golden smithies of the Emperor,
Marbles of the dancing floor
Break bitter furies of complexity.
Those images that yet
Fresh images beget,
That dolphin-torn, that gong- tormented sea.
B
Yeats
207
W, B.
Yeats
DEATH
Nor dread nor hope attend
A dying animal;
A man awaits his end
Dreading and hoping all,
Many times he died,
Many times rose again
A great man in his pride
Confronting murderous men
Casts derision upon
Supersession of breath.
He knows death to the bone —
Man has created death
208
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Aldington, Richard
A Fool t* the Forest George Allen 6 Unwin Ltd 192J:
Collected Poems ,, ,, 1929
A Dream tn the Luxembourg
The Eaten Heart
Auden, W H
Poems
The Orators
Barker, George
Thirty Preliminary Poems
Bottrall, Ronald
The Loosening
Festivals of Fire
Campbell, Roy
The Flaming Terrapin
Adamastor
Flowering F^eds
DE LA Mare, Walter
The Fleeting
Eliot, T S
Poems iQog-ig2^
Ash Wednesday
Gogarty, Oliver
An Offer mo; of Swans Eyi
Wild Apples
Chatto O Wmdus Ltd 1932
Faber U Faber Ltd 1930
,, ,, 193^
Parton Press 1933
Minority Press 1931
Faber (in preparation)
Jonathan Cape Ltd 1924
Faber 1928
Boriswood Ltd 1933
Constable 0 Co Ltd 1933
Faber 1923*
1930
U Spottiswoode Ltd 1924
Cuala Press 1932
Higgins, F R
Island Blood John Lane The Bodley Head Ltd 1923'
The Dark Breed Macmillan U Co Ltd 1927
Arable Holdings Cuala Press 1933
209
Lewis, Cecil Day
Country Comets Martin Hopkinson Ltd 1928
Transitional Poems
Hogarth Press 1929
From Feathers to Iron
„ „ 1931
The Magnetic Mountain
.. 1933
Mew, Charlotte
The gambling Sailor
The Poetry Bookshop 1929
Miles, Susan
The Hares
Elkin Mathews 1924
Monro, Harold
The Earth for Sale
Chatto 1928
Collected Poems R Cobden-Sanderson Ltd 1953
Muir, Edwin
First Poems
Hogarth Press 1923
Chorus of the hlewly Dead
;; ;; ^ 9^6
O'Connor, Frank
The Wild Bird's Mest
Cuala Press 1932
Fitter, Ruth
First and Second Poems
Sheed O Ward Ltd 1927
Plomer, William
Motes for Poems
Hogarth Press 1928
The Family Tree
,, ,, 1929
The Fivefold Screen
„ 193^
PuDNEY, John
Spring Encounter
Methuen C) Co Ltd 1933
Quennell, Peter
Poems
Chatto 1926
Read, Herbert
Mutations of the Phcentx
Hogarth Press 1923
Collected Poems 1913-1925
Faber 1926
End of a War
„ 1933
210
Sassoon, Siegfried
Satirical Poems William Heinemann Ltd 1926
The Heart’s Journey ,, ,, ,, 1928
Scott, Geoffrey
A Box 0 Paints
Poems
Sitwell, Edith
Bucolic Comedies
The Sleeping Beauty
Ttoy Park
Collected Poems
Sitwell, Osbert
Out of the Flame
England Reclaimed
Collected Satires and Poems
Bookman's Journal 1923
Oxford University Press 1931
1923
1924
192;
1930
Grant Richards Ltd 1923
Duckworth 1927
M 1931
Gerald Duckworth U Co Ltd
Sitwell, Saciieverell
The Thirteenth Ceesar and other Poems
Grant Richards Ltd 1924
Exalt the Eglantine and other Poems
The Fleuron Ltd 1926
The Cyder Feast and Other Poems Duckworth 1927
Canons of' Giant Art Faber 1933
Spender, Stephen
Poems Faber 1933
Swingler, Randall
Ke construction Basil Blackwell Ltd 1933
Autumn Values and other Poems Methuen 1933
Chatto 192^
„ 1928
Warner, Sylvia Townsend
The Espalier
Time Importuned
211
Wolfe, Humbert
Kensington Gardens
The Unknown Goddess
News of the Devil
Humorescjue
This Blind Rose
Yeats, W B
The Tower
The Winding Stair
Ernest Benn Ltd 1924
Methuen 192J
,, 1926
„ 1926
Victor Gollancz Ltd 1928
Macmillan 1928
1933
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